Sins of the Fathers
by Snafu1000
Summary: AU follow-up to 3x01. The murder of a priest uncovers secrets that shake the Rizzoli family to its core and threaten to push Jane and Maura's estrangement past the point of no return. Chapter 8 up: A new twist and a split-second decision may change everything
1. Jane

_Author's Note: All right, time to start reposting this one. Like 'Judge, Jury & Executioner', it is an alternative follow-up to 3x01, but it will be veering much further into AU territory, and will be largely missing the humor that is alternately my favorite thing and biggest complaint about the show. I can't seem to find the motivation to rewrite 'Blue Blooded', but 'Crossing Lines' and 'A Rizzoli Childhood' are both included in this story-verse._

_No Rizzles planned, and while the ladies and their reactions to the strain on their friendship will be important, other characters will be key, too, because I adore the entire cast and the miracle of chemistry they have achieved. You could put any two characters together in a scene and have something worth watching; not something that can be said about every TV show out there._

_This story, like the show, will be about friends and family, friends __**as**__ family, and what you do for the people that you care about, set against a backdrop of crime. It's going to be a long haul, because I'm digging into some deep emotions of my own to power this, and I want to get them right. And because I have my stories in the Dragon Age universe that I am determined to finish._

_As always, Rizzoli & Isles are the property of Tess Gerritsen & TNT. My eternal gratitude to them for creating the characters and to Angie Harmon, Sasha Alexander and the rest of the cast for bringing them to life._

* * *

Detective Jane Rizzoli stepped out of the elevator and hesitated, staring at the doors that led into the morgue. She _really_ didn't want to go in there, but Frost was tied up in some kind of database search, and they needed the ballistics report to move any further on their latest homicide.

The morgue was a time-honored hurdle for rookies: find the nastiest, most decomposed corpse possible, line 'em up for the autopsy and watch them fall out, puke or faint. Jane had done none of the three, though she could still remember the smell of the guy who had blown his brains out and spent three days in an un-airconditioned Boston flat in August. She had taken a grim sort of pride in her accomplishment, and never ducked out of any errands to the morgue, but it had just been a place, part of the job that had to be done.

Then, for a while, it had been someplace that she _liked_ to come; not homey, exactly, but comfortable, welcoming. The dead were still generally messy and smelly, but there were answers there...and good company...and ...

And now, it was quite simply the last place that she wanted to be, and putrid corpses had nothing to do with it, but she still had a job to do, and the morgue was still a part of that job.

_Suck it up, Rizzoli._

Squaring her shoulders, she pushed through the glass doors into the autopsy suite, by-God _not_ thinking of the day that Bobby Marino had dragged her out of here by the hair, leaving Maura poised protectively over a wounded Frankie: the day that she'd thought had sealed their friendship forever.

_No such thing as forever, Jane. Didn't Pop teach you that, bailing on Mom for that bimbo?_

And now, he wanted an annulment. Sorry, Angela, but our marriage didn't really count. And the kids? They don't count, either. Bastards, just like their dad.

She was getting pissed, which she really didn't need to do if she wanted to attempt a civil conversation with the Medical Examiner. Turning away from the empty autopsy suite, she headed for the M.E.'s office, hearing voices within, already through the open door before she realized that she recognized both voices.

_Aw, crap._

Dr. Maura Isles was seated at her desk with Tommy Rizzoli standing behind her, massaging her shoulders. Both of them were looking at something on the computer screen and smiling; both smiles vanished as soon as they caught sight of her. Tommy had that half-guilty, half-defiant look that he wore like a second skin these days, and Maura just...looked. No expression, no hint of anything, but Jane could still feel the temperature in the room drop about twenty degrees.

It hurt. And she hated that it hurt. How long had it been since Maura had smiled at her? Since she had smiled at Maura? Hell, since she had smiled, period?

Answer: three weeks and two days. Since the day that she had shot Patrick Doyle before he could shoot her. Everything since then had been shit, and she had no idea how to make it right, or even if right was possible any more.

"Detective Rizzoli." Maura's voice was toneless. "Did you need something?"

"Dr. Isles," Jane replied in the same vein. _See, I can do 'Don't-Give-A-Shit', too._ "I was wondering if you had the ballistics report on the Kapersky homicide."

"I'll just...go." Tommy was edging from behind the desk and toward the door, now wearing the expression that had become common to anyone in the vicinity when the two former friends interacted. It bore a remarkable similarity to a bomb-squad technician approaching an unknown device that was ticking.

"There's no need, Tommy." Maura turned a warm smile to Jane's brother, then faded to ice-queen mode when she looked back to Jane. "Detective Rizzoli won't be here long. When I have the report, I will inform Detective Frost."

And that was how it was. Jane had hoped that digging up what information she could on Maura's birth mother might have made amends, and when she had asked Jane at the graveyard to tell Pike that she wanted her chair back, the detective had dared to hope that the breach between them could be mended. But for the last two weeks, everything went through Frost or Korsak, and when she did speak to Jane, it was in that distant tone that made her gut clench and her temper flare just like it was doing now.

"Yes, there's no need to leave, Tommy," she heard herself saying in a tone of saccharine sincerity. "Since Dr. Isles and I are no longer friends, I no longer have to worry about our friendship getting screwed up when you fall off the wagon and wrap her car around a telephone pole." She felt a flare of guilt when she saw his face harden, but damn it, he'd been sucking up to Maura shamelessly since the shooting, as though the fact that the two women were estranged might give him a shot at a date with the doctor. "You might want to keep in mind, though, that her old man could order your legs broken if he doesn't like you."

She saw that one hit home, felt a bitter twist of triumph at seeing the indifferent mask drop from Maura's face. Before she could speak, however, Tommy was bearing down on her with blazing eyes.

"I've been out for six months," he grated at her, "and I haven't touched a drop. What do I have to do to get you to cut me some slack?"

"You were dry for nine months before you ran down Father Crowley," Jane shot back. "Stay sober a year, and we'll talk. In the meantime, finding a damn job would be a good start."

"That's what I was doing before you interrupted," he snapped. "Maura, I'll see you later."

As he stalked out, Jane pinched the bridge of her nose, screwing her eyes shut tight. It really was not fair to have to face both of the two people who were best at pushing her buttons at once.

"God, you are such a bitch."

Her eyes popped open to find Maura glaring at her. "You think coddling him is gonna get him to turn around? That's what screwed him up in the first place! Ma spoiled him rotten from day one!" Even when he was getting into fights, stumbling home drunk, she'd made excuses for him, let him get away with anything.

"He's made mistakes!"

"He ran down a priest," Jane countered hotly. "On his _third_ DUI, after yet another promise that he'd never drink again! That's not a mistake, that's a felony, and he was so damn drunk, he _still_ doesn't remember it!" Jane drank, but she never got drunk, and Tommy was the reason.

"And of course, the great hero, Jane Rizzoli never makes any mistakes?" The scathing sarcasm cut deep; the connection, the almost instinctive understanding that had made their friendship so easy and strong had turned on itself. They each knew where the tender spots were, and they just could not stop taking shots at them...and hitting.

"Not when a perp is pointing a gun at me!" That shooting was clean, and she would stand by that decision to the death. Paddy Doyle had turned what should have been a cut and dried sting operation into a clusterfuck of a shootout, killing the suspect, shooting an FBI agent, and coming within a heartbeat of shooting Jane or Frost. She'd seen it in his eyes, flat and cold, like a snake ready to strike. "I make a mistake then, and I'm dead. Or maybe that's what you'd prefer had happened?" She'd turned those moments over in her head a million times, looking for any other way things could have unfolded, anything else she could have done, and come up empty.

"I would have preferred to not have Agent Dean show up," Maura replied icily.

"He had more business there than Doyle!" Jane snapped back, fire against ice. Maura hadn't said that she wouldn't have preferred Jane dead to Paddy Doyle wounded, and that made the anger and hurt twist even tighter in her chest. Anger she could handle, the hurt was something else entirely, something that she had never had a tolerance for. Physical pain was easy, but emotional pain...you couldn't block it, couldn't dodge it, and while physical injuries were generally inflicted by foes, emotional wounds could only be caused by someone you trusted, someone you had opened yourself up to.

She'd put her career on the line for Maura, by not speaking up as soon as she knew about the M.E.'s connection to the Irish mobster, and that he was making contact with his daughter. She'd damn near lost her job in the aftermath of that shooting, and Gabriel Dean...well, she'd definitely lost that. No matter how sincere his apology, no matter how much she knew that she would have likely done the same thing in his shoes, she knew that she would never know one-hundred percent that he hadn't come back to Boston and her bed just to get information on Paddy Doyle. He'd betrayed her, and worse: he'd made her betray Maura. Her personal and professional life was in a shambles because of the woman in front of her: the woman who wouldn't even say that she didn't want her dead.

"You know, I really don't have time for this." Yes, she was retreating...fuck, she was _running_, because she really, _really_ wanted to smash something all of a sudden, but she couldn't have raised a hand against Maura if her life depended on it. She had to get out of here. "I have a job to do, and if that ballistics report isn't complete, I'd say that you do, too."

Maura's voice followed her out the door. "At least my job isn't shooting people!"

_Don't do it. Don't do it._ Her body spun back around, seemingly of its own volition. _Shit._ Why couldn't she stop this? "No, that's your father's job." Some inner part of her cringed at the mocking lilt in her voice, but the Rizzoli temper was in the driver's seat now, guarding the hurt like a mother bear with an injured cub. "No, my mistake: he uses an icepick. Have a nice day, Dr. Isles."

She bolted for the elevator before Maura could come up with a reply that she knew would just goad her further. The door slid shut behind her, and instead of pressing the button, she backed into one corner and leaned there, hands on her knees, trembling with anger and shame and grief, drawing slow, deep breaths, one after the other, forcing it down, _controlling_ it, damn it, until her pulse was no longer thundering in her ears, until the shaking subsided. She was Jane Rizzoli, a cop with a job to do, and cops didn't let personal issues get in the way of doing the job.

Cops didn't cry. Jane Rizzoli didn't cry, damn it. She wouldn't. Not any more.

She hit the button felt the elevator start upward.

One look at Korsak and Frost told her all she needed to know.

"Don't do that to me again," she growled, stalking to her desk and glowering at Frost, who was trying to hide behind his monitor.

"C'mon, Jane." Korsak was not so easily intimidated. "We just thought that if you two talked, you could work things out."

"Not gonna happen," she replied wearily, shuffling through papers, willing herself to focus on them. Christ, but she felt like she'd just gone ten rounds with Ali and Frazier back to back. "She hates me, so get used to it. You two had better deal with her if we want to get any actual work done." She glanced back at Frost. "Tell me that database search wasn't just an excuse."

"It wasn't," Frost said hastily, adding with a hangdog look, "but it came up dry. Kapersky isn't listed in any of the known gangs in the area, no criminal record."

Jane scowled. White male, nineteen years of age, found dead of multiple gunshot wounds in a parking garage, and with enough meth residue in his clothes to get a football team high...but no drugs or money on him. "Aliases?"

"On that now," Frost replied promptly, ducking back behind his monitor with the relieved expression of a man who had just dodged a bullet, and Jane felt shame heating her cheeks. Vince and Barry were more than colleagues; they were her friends, and they had just been trying to help. Not their fault that she had screwed things up beyond recovery.

"Thanks, Frost," she told him quietly. "I'm just gonna...go over the witness statements again." All two of them. Neither had actually seen the shooting, but maybe, just maybe, there was a detail that was hidden in their words, some little something that they could grab onto. If not, they had to hope that the ballistics of the bullets that had killed Kapersky were on file. If not, it was going to be a shitload of legwork with little hope of actually finding a suspect, let alone getting a conviction. She wouldn't be losing much sleep over this one; she'd seen what meth did to people, and as far as she was concerned, drug dealers shooting each other was a form of urban improvement.

Christ, when had she gotten so jaded? These days, it sometimes felt as though she had been born that way. Maura had kept her balanced with that damned unsinkable optimism that was so incongruous in someone who spent their life in the middle of reminders of human failures and mortality, but...

_Will you stop that? It's done, it's over. Back to our regularly scheduled programming._ She had lived for most of her life without the friendship of Dr. Maura Isles, and she could damn well live the rest of it the same way.

_Yeah, you've pretty much guaranteed that._

_Oh, for Christ's -_

"Heads up," Cavanaugh called out as he entered, just as Rizzoli was on the verge of exploding from her chair in frustration. "Got a body at Our Lady of the Sacred Heart, probable homicide."

"Near Revere?" Jane turned to look at the Lieutenant in surprise, momentarily distracted from the pinball machine on crank that her brain had apparently morphed into. "That's my family's church." Not that she'd been lately, but it had been a twice weekly destination in her childhood, not to mention the parochial school...

"Maybe you can confirm ID on the body, then," Cavanaugh replied. "The caller said that it was one of the priests."


	2. Maura

_Why do we keep doing this?_

Maura stared at the elevator doors as they slid closed. Her eyes flicked upward, to the numbers above the doors, but the 'B' remained lit. Jane was right there, just a few feet away. She could step forward, press the call button. The doors would open, and she would be face to face with Jane again. She would apologize, and keep apologizing until the shell that Jane had wrapped herself in cracked and she had _her_ Jane back again, her best friend, and not the hard-eyed, hard-voiced stranger who had taken her place. And Jane would apologize, and they would both start crying, but it would be all right, because they would be friends again, and maybe then Maura herself could change back into someone that she recognized.

She didn't move, staring at the numbers until the 'B' went dark and the '1' lit up, then the '2', then the '3'. Third floor: Homicide. She backed away, retreating into the clinical world of stainless steel and glass and porcelain that had always been her refuge, telling herself that the fight-or-flight symptoms that she was experiencing were vestigial reflexes that served no purpose in her current situation. She did not need the cortisol and epinephrine that her adrenal glands had dumped into her bloodstream; there was no reason for her heart to be pounding so quickly, for the vasodilation that was making her feel lightheaded as it rushed oxygenated blood to her skeletal muscles. It was not a life or death situation. She could survive without the friendship of Jane Rizzoli, and it was looking increasingly likely that she would have to.

Oh, but it would be lonely.

Like an individual blind from birth would have no concept of colors, she had been alone for most of her life without being lonely...or at least, without recognizing her loneliness. Left behind in boarding school while her parents traveled, she had latched onto her teachers as surrogates. Hungry for approval, affection, she had been the straight-A student, the good girl: Maura the Bore-a. Teachers had praised her, her parents had beamed approvingly on visits and vacations, telling her what a smart young woman she was. Children her own age had ridiculed her or ostracized her; she, in turn, ignored them, backing away to observe from an emotionally safe distance.

People were easy to understand in theory: biology, physiology, psychology, sociology all obeyed certain rules that could be learned. Applying those rules to living, breathing, chaotic human beings proved to be much, much harder, and while she never stopped trying, she had grown accustomed to the strange looks, the edging away that told her that she had overstepped some invisible boundary that wasn't in the rules of science, and that it was time to simply put on her mask of polite distance and withdraw. As an adult, she was pretty enough that she had no difficulty in attracting men to fulfill her sexual needs, and if none of them stayed for long, that was something that she was used to. Sooner or later, everyone left, and she was alone, and that was the way it was.

The dead were always easy to understand. There were no hidden rules to stumble over; they obeyed the laws of science that she was familiar with, didn't laugh at her or look at her strangely or make promises that she knew would be broken sooner or later. They spoke a language that she could understand and interpret for others, and when she had gained all the information that she could from them, they left her, like everyone else...but on _her_ terms. Her world had been peaceful and orderly...and empty.

Jane Rizzoli had burst into her peaceful, orderly world like a comet. Brash and boisterous, impulsive and intense, outspoken and opinionated, she was everything that the quiet, reserved, controlled forensic pathologist was not, and she had fascinated Maura. She had met her – really met her – for the first time right here in this morgue, she realized with a bittersweet ache. Over this very table.

* * *

"_Victim is a white female, approximately twelve years of age." Maura tilted the head to the side. "Cause of death appears to be a single gunshot wound to the occipital region of the skull -"_

"_Eighteen." Startled, Maura looked up; the tumble of black hair drew the eye first, falling past the shoulders in unruly waves. The eyes were next: as dark as the hair (Italian-American, the ME noted in the near-instinctive analysis that she always fell back upon when encountering someone new), they were bright with intelligence, anger and a barely-seen sorrow that vanished as soon as the newcomer realized she was being observed."She was eighteen years old. Nearly nineteen."_

"_Are you certain?" Maura glanced from the woman back to the girl on the table. "Her build and secondary sexual characteristics are indicative of one who has not undergone puberty yet."_

"_That's because her fucking pimp has been forcing her to take drugs that block the hormones." The woman's voice was hard, her expression harder, but she looked familiar, somehow. Maura had seen her before, but not in the no-nonsense slacks, t-shirt and jacket; she was sure of that. "All the better to appeal to the baby-rapers without actually running the risk of sexual assault on a minor."_

_Maura stared at her for a moment. "That's awful," she said softly, lowering the fluoroscope and focusing upon the epiphyseal plates in the femur, confirming that they indeed showed a degree of fusion consistent with the late teen years. "How...how did you know?" The physical facts of violence could be quantified, described, their effects understood on an anatomical and physiological level; even the fact that certain individuals were sexually aroused by prepubescent boys and girls was a clinical condition with a description in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders: pedophilia. She'd never had to deal with the ugly reality of the consequences of such predilections in the living, breathing bodies of the victims before they wound up on her table, never had to look into anguished eyes and try to find words of comfort, which was probably just as well, because she would undoubtedly fail spectacularly._

_The dark haired woman stepped closer to the table, one hand reaching out to brush a blood-matted lock of hair away from the pale, still face. "Because I was __**this**__ close to getting her off the damn streets," she muttered, "and that bastard found out."_

"_Her pimp?" The way the woman was standing placed her face in profile, and the finely boned features and high cheekbones finally triggered the association, even in the absence of the too-heavy makeup and spike heels."You're the prostitute!" Dark eyes cut sideways, one eyebrow arched in a 'what the fuck are you talking about' look. "At the coffee kiosk...a couple of...weeks...ago..." Maura bit her lip, realizing belatedly that the woman probably wouldn't have wanted that blurted out in the basement of police headquarters. _

"_And you were the one who tried to pay for my order." The woman was regarding her with recognition and resigned amusement, a faint smirk as she drew her jacket aside to display a gold shield clipped to her belt. "This is my day job. Officer Jane Rizzoli, Vice."_

_Day job? Maura felt her brow furrowing as she tried to figure out why the Boston Police would allow one of their officers to moonlight as a - "Oh!" Comprehension washed over her. "You were working undercover, weren't you? Did you make a – a butt?"_

_Officer Rizzoli blinked, her lips twitching visibly, and Maura felt her heart sink. Once she had known that she had this position, she had studied up on law enforcement vernacular terms, but she had obviously missed this one._

"_I think you mean a bust," Officer Rizzoli corrected her with a faint smile, "and yes, I did. A couple that night, in fact. Thanks for offering to pay Stanley, by the way." The smile faded as her eyes turned back to the body on the table. "So, you're the new M.E.?"_

"_Chief Medical Examiner for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts," Maura clarified, then immediately felt like a pompous ass for doing so. "Dr. Maura Isles."_

_The dark eyes cut back to her, dead serious. "Well, Dr. Maura Isles, I'll make you a deal. Find something to help me nail the piece of shit that did this, and I'll treat you to dinner. Your choice."_

"_That's not necessary," Maura assured her. "It's my job to discover forensic evidence to aid law enforcement in determining cause of death and either eliminating or incriminating potential suspects."_

_Officer Rizzoli gave her 'the look': the one that invariably preceded a new acquaintance finding a pressing matter to attend to elsewhere. Maura knew it all too well, so she was surprised when the officer only nodded slowly, saying, "It's personal to me, now. That fucker Rodney killed her because she was about to leave, because I talked her into it. I want his ass, and the offer stands."_

_She turned to go, striding toward the door. "Officer Rizzoli?"_

_She stopped, glancing back curiously._

"_Do you know her name? Her real name, I mean," Maura clarified. "The name that came up when we ran her fingerprints was Veronique DuBois, but that was probably an alias, and..." she trailed off, unable to articulate how wrong it felt to call this broken body by the name that had been used by the countless men who had used her, unkindly, if the scars on the body were anything to go by. "I just thought it would be more respectful to her to -"_

"_Lisa." The reply was accompanied by a faint but unmistakable softening of the hard edged features and the obsidian eyes, and Maura felt a tiny swell of satisfaction that she had said something right. "Her name was Lisa Michelle Franks."_

* * *

The ballistics from the bullet had been linked to a gun bearing the fingerprints of one Rodney Jackson, who was now serving life in prison for First Degree Murder. Officer Rizzoli had insisted on making good on her promise, and because she suspected that Rizzoli would also insist on paying, even if she selected one of her usual favorites, such as Troquet or Prezza, she had asked the officer for a recommendation, which was how she had wound up at the Dirty Robber for the first time. She hadn't been back since the shooting.

She felt the tears on her cheeks, wiped them away as she returned to her office, sank back into her chair and tried to focus on the ballistics report before her. It was just another repetition of the pattern that had been established over the course of her life. People came into her life and they left. Her parents, her teachers, Garrett, Ian, Jane. At the end of it all, she was alone, and she was used to that.

_But Jane was different! She wasn't supposed to leave!_

Maura had waited for it from the start, had withdrawn herself countless times when she had made some gaffe that had earned her 'the look', but to her surprise, Jane had followed, asking questions of her own, willing to admit her own ignorance in forensic science, trading that knowledge for lessons in how to talk and act around other people, though the deal had never been specifically couched in any terms. It just _was_. _They_ just were, fitting together in some strange way that seemed to have no explanation in the laws of science, but that had become as much a bulwark to Maura as the facts and statistics that she had always held to; like them, Jane Rizzoli was a constant in her life.

Until Patrick Doyle.

The discovery that she was the illegitimate child of the notorious Irish mobster, a known murderer, had been devastating, and she had wanted nothing to do with him. But then, she had seen the pictures, the clippings: graduations, recitals, academic competitions and awards ceremonies. Many of them she had gone to believing herself alone, her adoptive parents somewhere across the globe, but Paddy Doyle had been there, watching her, loving her, proud of her, and that knowledge had left her struggling with feelings and emotions that she had thought left behind in her teen years: the yearning for the unconditional love of the parents who had given her up for adoption.

He'd risked his life and his freedom, coming to that warehouse to protect her. He'd shot Kevin Flynn, the bastard who had nearly killed her mother in his attempt to run her down in the street. But then, he'd shot Gabriel Dean, who had absolutely no business being there, and then...

Her mind invariably broke the next few seconds up into a series of freeze-frame shots, as though it could not handle the whole of it. Jane shouting. Doyle's gun shifting to aim at the detective. Her own scream. The report of Jane's gun. Doyle falling, breaking through the railing of the catwalk and plummeting to the floor. Her own voice, hateful and venomous: "Don't you touch him!". The hurt, puzzled look on Jane's face as she complied.

It was ridiculous. They had both brought baggage to that operation: her father, Jane's lover, and Jane had been right: Dean had more right to be there, but Paddy Doyle was her father, and blood was thicker than water, right? Jane had said so.

"_I'm blood. __**She's**__ water."_

That had torn something inside her. Jane had shared her own family unstintingly – except for objecting to Tommy's attempts at flirting. And after Maura had saved Frankie's life that awful day, they had accepted her as one of their own. Angela was everything that her own mother was not, more like Jane than the detective would ever admit, and what Jane found suffocating, frustrating, was to Maura like a deep, ground-soaking rain after a long drought. She missed Jane's family, had been glad when Tommy had dropped by to ask about using her as a reference on job applications. They had looked at a few announcements online, and Tommy had been telling her about one of Jane's first jobs, being a skating carhop at a local drive-in diner, and how she had slipped and dumped a tray of milkshakes into the lap of a guy she had a crush on, and Maura couldn't help but smile at the thought, and think that surely...surely they could get past this, be friends again.

And then Jane had come in and lashed out at Tommy. Maura knew how much the youngest Rizzoli idolized his sister, how much her criticisms cut, but what would have once been a careful reprimand had come out hateful, catty.

"_You are such a bitch."_

But she had been the bitch first, hadn't she? Treating her best friend like an unwelcome intruder instead of jumping up and hugging her tight and not letting go until Jane Rizzoli hugged her back.

"_Dr. Isles and I are no longer friends."_

She hadn't thought of it that way...hadn't let herself think of it that way. Their terse interactions at work had been a way for her to vent her pique and frustration, a way of still connecting with her best friend, even though they were angry with each other. Never once had it occurred to her that the estrangement might be permanent, and those eight words had very nearly broken her heart. And still she couldn't keep from lashing out, trying to hurt Jane as much as she was hurting, and now Jane thought that she wished that Paddy Doyle had killed her. She'd seen that in the deep brown eyes: the pain and betrayal, before the shutters came down and the hard-eyed stranger had spun away from her.

Her best friend – the first real friend she'd ever had - thought that she wanted her dead, and still she couldn't seem to stop uttering hurtful words every time she opened her mouth. What was _wrong_ with her?

Any other time, she could have asked Jane, and Jane would have told her, teased her about being a cyborg, taken her out to talk about it over beer and chili-cheese fries at the Robber. But she didn't have Jane to talk to now, might never have that again.

_I'm used to being alone._

It had been true once, and maybe it could be true again, but she'd been given a glimpse of a vibrant world of color and caring and family and friends and trust, and the prospect of returning to blindness, losing it all, losing _Jane_, had silent tears dripping unheeded onto the ballistics report until the phone rang.

She wiped her eyes, cleared her throat. "Dr. Isles." She listened, making note of the details: probable murder, Catholic church near Revere. Jane's hometown. "I'm on my way." She hung up the phone, moved to assemble her kit, slowing a bit as she realized that Jane would most likely be one of the responding detectives. They couldn't work their differences out at a crime scene, but maybe she could invite her to grab a bite to eat afterward. Maybe Jane would accept.

Maybe.

_Please?_


	3. The Scene Of The Crime

_Shit, shit, shit._

Jane prowled the perimeter of the room, her steps careful, her eyes searching the scene. This was going to be a bitch of a case, with pressure from every possible direction. The victim _was_ a priest: one Father Daniel Murtaugh, age forty-eight, who had been a beloved member of Our Lady of the Sacred Heart for twenty-three years. According to the shaky testimony of Father Andrew Torelli, the elderly priest who was the senior pastor of the congregation, and Mother Superior Beatrice Peters, headmistress of the parochial school (Jane had slipped right back into calling her Queen Bea...but only in her mind, though the woman had certainly not hesitated to use the old 'Miss Rizzoli' on the homicide detective), the man had been a saint: tirelessly visiting the elderly and shut-ins, coaching the church's little-league baseball teams, deeply involved in an overseas adoption program that matched orphans in eastern European countries with American couples and assisted with travel and legal arrangements.

All of that pretty well squared with Jane's memories of the man...sort of.

"God, I had the biggest crush on him," she murmured, looking at the pictures that adorned the walls: Father Daniel with two decades' worth of baseball teams, showing the progression from the ruggedly handsome new seminary graduate to the bespectacled but distinguished cleric he had been at the time of his death. His dark hair had gone largely grey, but had not thinned overly much, and his smile remained almost unchanged over the years: broad and good-natured, white teeth gleaming, it had more girls than Jane falling all over themselves. "I used to volunteer to drive Tommy to baseball practice, and there'd be about half a dozen of us, hanging around and gawking."

Days of innocence, when she could sit in the bleachers with Beth Capellino and Kathryn Davis and giggle over the good-looking priest. She wondered suddenly where Beth and Kate were now. Married with kids? Members of this same congregation still, anxiously awaiting confirmation of the first garbled reports that had brought first ambulance crews, then BPD homicide to the scene? They'd kept in touch for the first few years after high school; she and Beth had even attended the same community college, but the lunch dates grew further and further apart, postponed or missed as life provided distractions. Friendships grew and faded, and that was the way it was. She missed Beth and Kate, but in a fuzzy, abstract sort of way that didn't really hurt at all, and she knew that she wouldn't be bothered overly much if she never saw either of them again. Give it some time, and the same would apply to Maura.

_Right?_

"A priest?" Frost lowered the camera to smirk at her. "You gotta be kidding me. What did your mother say about that?"

She shrugged, giving him a wan smile. "He was safe. If we were looking at him, we weren't out with guys who we might do more than look at." Her eyes skated over to where Maura crouched beside the body, which had been beaten so severely that Jane hadn't been able to make a positive ID; what hair she could see beneath the blood and exposed brain matter seemed to be the same color and length as the most recent of the photos, and the glasses that lay beside the body, though shattered, had been likewise similar, but the face had been obliterated by multiple blows, the body a mass of contusions and broken bones. Normally, she'd be hanging over the medical examiner's shoulder, badgering her with impatient questions, but nothing was normal now. Or maybe this was the new normal.

She approached carefully, forcing herself to focus on the crime scene, what it told her. Despite the obvious violence of the attack, there was little out of order in the room itself, a combination living area and study. An umbrella stand beside the door that led to the hallway outside had been overturned, but otherwise nothing, and the blood spatter patterns were likewise restricted to the area close to where the body had been found. A swift, brutal attack had quickly incapacitated the priest, but had been continued well after he'd gone down, with such violence that drops of blood could be seen on the ceiling overhead, and on floors and walls six feet or more from the body.

"How long until we can get a positive ID?" she asked quietly, fighting to keep anything but professional detachment from her voice. She'd had enough of the sniping, enough of the cutting remarks: enough, period. She didn't do well with this type of emotional guerrilla warfare, and the sooner she got her footing with Maura back to the just business ground that they'd started on, the quicker she could be on her way to not feeling like she was missing a limb, the quicker the hollow ache in her chest could begin to fade to a fuzzy awareness of loss that didn't really hurt at all.

"It's going to take time." Maura didn't look up from the corpse, her tone matching Jane's, which was both relief and disappointment. "Dentition and facial structure have been severely compromised, which means either DNA or fingerprints."

"He worked with kids and with an overseas adoption program," Jane offered, "which means he's likely got prints on file in a couple of databases. I'll check the bathroom for a brush." The priest's apartment in the rectory consisted of the living area, a bedroom and a small bathroom with a shower. Meals were prepared by the housekeeper and taken in the common dining room with Father Andrew. When Father Dan hadn't shown up for breakfast, the older priest had come looking for him and discovered the body; the paramedics who had responded to the call were giving the poor man oxygen while Korsak interviewed him and Queen Bea in greater depth. Shit, she hoped he didn't have a heart attack that she would have to tell her mother about along with Father Dan's murder. "Safe to call blunt force trauma as cause of death?" The apparent weapon, an aluminum baseball bat coated with blood, hair and chips of bone, had been lying next to the body.

Another time, in another life, Maura would have chided her for pushing for an assumption, but she just nodded now, still not looking up. "That would be my preliminary finding," she agreed in a clinical tone, "but the extent of the damages could be concealing other injuries that the full autopsy will reveal. I am confident in declaring it a homicide, however."

Jane nodded, hearing in her mind the smartass comment that would have fallen from her lips, had this happened a few weeks ago. _Don't go too far out there on the limb, Maur._ But that was then, this was now, as S.E. Hinton said, so she just said, "Thanks," and turned away, letting her eyes sweep the living area once more. Not a damn thing out of place, no sign of forced entry, and liver temperature put the time of death at somewhere between ten and midnight on the previous night, but Father Andrew had not seen or heard anything. Which meant that either the perp had sneaked in through an unlocked door and lain in wait, or Father Dan had known them.

Who in the hell would want to do this to a priest? Some damn sadistic psycho, like Hoyt? Another of his seemingly endless supply of apprentices, this one primed to go off even after his death?

_Hoyt's dead. And this isn't anything like his MO._ She could tell herself that, and she might even mostly believe it, but there remained the primal part of her that might never stop seeing the shadow of Charles Hoyt in every unusual murder, never stop remembering what he had done to her, what he had done because of her.

She realized suddenly that Maura was looking at her...or more accurately, at her hands: her right thumb rubbing over the scar in the center of her left palm.

_Shit._ She hadn't done that in months. She dropped her hands to her side, looking away before she could see the pity in Maura's eyes. Or the disgust. She didn't know anymore which it would be. _Judge, jury and executioner._ That had been the accusation that Maura had hurled at her after the shooting, and she had surely executed Hoyt, but the only reason that she had found the will to do it, the raw fury needed to override the years of training to allow the justice system to do its job had been the sight of Maura's blood when Hoyt had touched the scalpel to her throat, the knowledge that if the bastard lived, he'd never stop looking for a way to finish what he'd started. She'd killed him to keep Maura safe. And now they couldn't even meet each other's eyes.

"Gonna check out the bedroom and bathroom," she muttered, stalking away without waiting for a response from Frost.

* * *

Maura watched Jane go, her heart torn between an aching empathy and a hope so fragile that she could barely bring herself to examine it, lest it burst apart under the weight of inspection. Her resolve to ask Jane to go eat after they left the crime scene had faltered, first in the face of the extreme violence of the crime, then Jane's unreadable face. Maura had studied extensively on how to interpret the emotions reflected in the human expression; it helped her avoid making too many social _faux pas_ if she could tell when she was getting close to some unknown line. Some people were more difficult to interpret than others, but she'd never had any trouble reading Jane Rizzoli's emotions since the earliest days of their friendship; Jane trusted her, let her see beyond the responsible oldest child persona that she had adopted with her family and the badass cop that was all that she would show the rest of the world, to her doubts and fears, hopes and dreams. She'd seen Jane at her most vulnerable, and the night that Jane had trusted her enough to go to sleep, leaving Maura on guard with a gun that she'd never fired, had been one of the proudest moments of the doctor's life.

"_Do I look badass?" _

_She'd known the question was silly, that she probably looked as threatening as a kid with a cap pistol, but Jane hadn't laughed, giving her an affectionate, weary smile._

"_Yeah. Definitely badass."_

She hadn't seen that Jane..._her_ Jane, since she'd come to the hospital after the shooting to ask Maura to cover up the fact that they had known that Patrick Doyle was her father, which had infuriated her until she had enough time to think and realize that was precisely what Jane, Korsak and Frost had done for her, without being asked. They'd had her back. But by then, she had already lashed out and seen the frustrated hurt and regret for the briefest moment in the dark eyes before the walls had gone up.

And they'd stayed up, and hurt and fear had made her put up walls of her own, and now she didn't know what would undo it all. "I never asked for much," she'd told Jane once, trying to explain why her parents had never been openly affectionate. The truth was, she didn't know _how_ to ask for anything of any real importance, then or now, and now, as then, she was afraid to even try to ask, afraid of being rejected. Easier to say nothing, tell herself that she didn't really need anything after all, retreat behind the clinical competence, the intellect that had always been her shield. But then...

It had been months since she'd seen Jane reflexively massaging the scars on her hands, but in those few, unguarded seconds, the walls that had gone up between them had been down, and she had been able to see _Jane_, not the stranger she'd become. She was in there still, so there was still hope, but did she have the courage to try to reach her, could she keep hurtful words from falling unbidden from her tongue? She didn't understand what made her say such things, didn't understand the mix of spiteful satisfaction and cringing horror that filled her when she saw her words hit home.

_Stay quiet and you will lose your best friend for good,_ she told herself sternly. _You know she's still there; you just have to reach her, tell her you forgive her, ask her to forgive you. _The shooting had been a convergence of unfortunate circumstance, and she admitted that they had both been at fault in their behaviors since then. One of them had to take the first step toward mending the breach, admit fault, ask for forgiveness, and Maura knew that Jane's stubborn pride would not let her do it.

_But what if it's not that? _The inner voice was very small, and more than a little afraid as she turned her eyes back to the body, visually categorizing the myriad injuries like a mantra that would drown out the voice. It was the voice of the girl who had always been chosen last for any team in physical education class; the girl who spent recess immersed in a textbook, doggedly ignoring the chants of "Maura the Bore-a!"; the girl who had been left behind time and again, until she accepted it as the way of things. _What if she really doesn't want to be your friend any more? What happens when you tell her something else that she doesn't like?_

When, not if. The extreme nature of the injuries of the deceased, the fact that the assailant – or assailants – had continued the attack even after the victim had been immobilized and likely dead, the lack of forced entry, all pointed to both a personal acquaintance with the victim and extreme rage, and the medical examiner could think of at least one motive that would fit the currently known facts. She dreaded the necessity of even raising the possibility about a priest that the Rizzoli family had known and trusted from Jane's youth...not until she had more than her current suspicions.

"No sign of forced entry anywhere in the rectory," Vince Korsak announced as he entered the apartment. "The padre didn't see or hear anything last night, and the Mother Superior says that nobody has mentioned any suspicious activity around the church in the last few days, but she'll ask the other nuns and the students and contact us if anything turns up." He smirked as Jane came back into the room, sealing an evidence bag around a hairbrush. "She also said that she hopes this will get you to Mass on Sunday."

Jane snorted. "Yeah, right," she muttered, her eyes skating around the room, looking everywhere but at Maura, and her movements were quick, restless. "The bedroom and the bathroom don't appear to have been disturbed. This brush should be good for a DNA comparison if the prints aren't available." She placed the bag with the other evidence that had been collected and straightened, fidgeting. "Look, can you guys finish processing the scene? I wanna talk to Ma about this before it hits the news."

"Sure, Jane," Vince said at once, echoed by Barry. Angela Rizzoli had become the de facto den mother of Boston Homicide, and they were all only slightly less protective of her than Jane and Frankie. Maura missed Angela almost as much as she missed Jane, but she had carefully maintained her distance; it wasn't fair to Angela to put her in the middle of this.

It took all the courage Maura had to speak up, and the detective was nearly out the door. "Jane?"

She paused and glanced back, her expression careful, guarded, but she had plainly noticed that the doctor had not called her 'Detective Rizzoli' for the first time in better than two weeks. "Yeah?"

Maura swallowed hard, pushed ahead. "I was going to grab a bite to eat after work," she said awkwardly. "I was wondering if...if you would join me?" Her eyes fell away from the other woman on the last words, afraid to see the rejection in Jane's face before she heard it in her voice. She didn't miss the fact that Korsak and Frost had unobtrusively paused in their own activities, waiting for an answer to her question.

"Umm...sure." Jane's voice sounded no less hesitant than her own had, and when Maura chanced a look up, instead of rejection, there was the faintest softening of eyes that had been as hard as obsidian, Jane's face no longer completely impassive, though the emotion there remained elusive. "The Robber, five thirty?"

Maura nodded, relief washing through her at mention of the familiar spot, the fact that Jane had suggested it. "I'll...see you then," she said, trying to speak as casually as she could, offering a hesitant smile that Jane returned: a small smile, but a smile all the same, and she felt something in her chest loosen, a tightness that had been there for so long now that she had almost forgotten that it was not normal.

"I'll see you," she agreed, gathering up her gear and putting it in her bag as Jane left.

"Good move, Doc," Vince congratulated her after the footsteps had faded. "She misses you; I can tell."

Korsak had known Jane longer than any of them, and hearing those words from him caused the stricture in her chest to loosen even more, threatening to release tears for the second time that day. "I miss her, too, Vince." She swallowed hard, looking down at the dead body. "I need your help with something."

"Sure, Doc." The grizzled veteran regarded her curiously. "What's up?"

"The violence of this attack," Maura began, gesturing at the body, "suggests something very personal and very intense was driving the killer. With a priest as the victim..."

"Yeah." Korsak was already nodding, his face grim. "Yeah, that's definitely a motive we're gonna have to consider, and Jane ain't gonna like it." He cocked his head. "I'll bring it up tomorrow. Just act like you never thought of it, all right? I'm used to broads being pissed at me."

"Can't imagine why," Frost put in dryly, though his expression made it clear that he had reached the same conclusions that Vince and Maura had. Still, it was at least a faint echo of the banter that Maura had become accustomed to over the years, and it brought another small smile to her face.

"Thank you both," she told them, standing and moving to the door to inform the morgue technicians that the body was ready for transport.

* * *

Vince Korsak was an old school cop. When he'd come up, women were rare on the force at all, and unheard of in the ranks of detectives. When he'd been assigned the gung-ho rookie fresh off of a promotion from Vice, he had not been happy, and he'd made damn sure that Rizzoli knew it.

All the shit he gave her, all the shit that all the guys gave her, only made Rizzoli work harder, push harder, and Korsak was forced at last to admit that she was a tough bitch and a cop with good instincts, along with an instinctive compassion that had been burned out of too many seasoned veterans. He never bothered telling Jane about the change in his assessment of her, which was why she acted on the longshot tip about a serial killer's latest victim alone and wound up at the mercy of Charles Hoyt with her hands pinned to a dirt basement floor by a pair of scalpels.

Korsak could still remember the way she'd tried so damn hard to hold it together after he'd shot the bastard: biting back her fear, swallowing her sobs, but unable to stop moaning, "It hurts, it hurts!" over and over. He still heard that voice in his nightmares, still hated himself for being the reason she'd been hurt.

Even more right now, though, he hated what that sorry bastard, Paddy Doyle, had done to what had become a damned good homicide investigation team. The estrangement between Jane and Maura had bled over into everything; the easy banter and exchange of thoughts that had once flowed at scenes had been replaced by silence and terse comments.

Why the hell did chicks make things so damn complicated? If they were two guys, they could get drunk, beat the shit out of each other and be good to go, but this... The catfight jokes had petered out well before the end of the first week, but the hissing and spitting just kept going on, and Jane, being the stubborn, proud pain-in-the-ass that she was, would drop dead before showing weakness, in spite of the fact that anyone with eyes could see she was hurting. They both were. Vince was no counselor, but he'd been giving serious consideration to grabbing them both by the scruff and telling them to cowboy the hell up. There were probably worse ways to go than getting shot by two angry broads, right?

Broads. He'd kick the ass of anyone else he heard calling them that. He loved Jane like a daughter, and Dr. Isles was a class act all the way. He hoped like hell that they'd patch things up at last over this dinner.

"Korsak." Frost called. "Check this out."

Vince turned to look. He'd been thoroughly prepared to dislike the newest addition to the homicide division: a college boy who dressed like his mother was still picking his clothes and relied too damn much on the gadgets and gizmos that had replaced good old detective work. That he'd been assigned as Jane's partner – at her request – had stung, too, though the three of them had finally squared that out between them.

The kid – much as Jane had – had surprised him. Barry Frost was no sissy, regardless of how he dressed. He'd taken on some tough perps, and while Vince had never bothered learning karate or any of that other fancy shit, he could appreciate the effectiveness when he saw it. He was good with computers and the other techno-crap, but he knew how to use his eyes and ears, as well, and he had good instincts. And he had Jane's back. They both did.

Frost was standing at the dead priest's desk now, holding up a blue wire in a gloved hand. "This is a DSL cable, but there's no computer. Did the other priest mention if he had one?"

Korsak shook his head. "I'm willing to bet the old guy wouldn't know a mouse from a modem, though."

"Like you?" Frost suggested with a smartass smirk. He was no Sean Cavanaugh...not yet, anyway, but he was a better cop than that asshole Crowe would ever be, and Korsak knew that if shit hit the fan, Barry Frost would have his back, too, so he just responded with an upraised middle finger and a grunt.

"I'll leave the techno-crap to you puppies, but I'll check with Father Andrew about the computer. Perp may have taken it." Why? To sell, or because there was something on it they wanted? Nothing else appeared to have been taken, though there really wasn't much of value here.

"I'll tell you one thing, though, Frost," he went on. "If we're dealing with a pervy priest, he's gonna have souvenirs somewhere." Korsak had yet to meet a freak that didn't keep some kind of memento: pictures, clothes, personal items, body parts for the worst of them...like some damned big-game hunter instead of a baby raping bastard.

Frost nodded, the smartass smirk fading. "Turn the place inside out then," he said, not asking. "What we're looking for could be on the missing computer, though. And even if we don't find anything, we're going to have to float the idea as a potential motive."

"I know," Korsak agreed glumly, "We'll put out an APB on all the pawn shops in the area, but this guy was pushing fifty, Frost. He may have used a computer, but I'm betting that he's got something more old school stashed somewhere, if Dr. Isles is right. If it's here, we find it _before_ we say a word to Jane. If we don't, we bring it up during the briefing tomorrow as a routine rule-out."

"And Dr. Isles didn't mention anything," Frost finished for him. "We thought of it ourselves."

"You sure you want a share of this?"

Frost shrugged with a faint smile. "Can't let an old guy like you take all the risk, can I? I figure with her aim split between the two of us, we might both stay alive long enough for her to cool down."

Korsak snorted. "How long have you been paired with Rizzoli, kid? BPD doesn't stock enough ammo for her to cool down when she really gets pissed. You just better hope we find something to support this before we bring it up."

Frost shook his head, brown eyes serious. "No, I really hope we don't."

Korsak was silent for a moment. "Yeah," he said at last, "me too."


	4. Back To The Beginning

_Author's Note: All right, finally got Aftermath done. OCD muse has been appeased, and will allow me to continue with this. I should get the rest of the repost chapters up in fairly short order and get on with writing new stuff._

* * *

Of all of Jane's regrets of the past few weeks, one of the biggest was definitely dragging her mother out of Maura's guest house...and not just because she and Angela were making each other nuts in the close confines of what had once been a perfectly comfortable solo apartment. She'd been a bitch...to her mother, as well as Maura, forcing her to choose, forcing her to leave an arrangement that had given her a semblance of independence, as well as comfort, after Pop had yanked the rug out from under her last year.

It was Angela's day off; she'd started taking Thursdays and Fridays, instead of the weekends, to give the two of them a break from each other. And of course, Tommy's bike was chained at the stoop.

_Shit, shit, shit._ As far as mantras went, it wasn't bad. Simple and easy to remember. Maybe she should get it put on a coffee cup. Chant it during yoga. Except she wasn't doing yoga any more, because that had been one of the things she had done with Maura.

_Shit, shit, shit._

She parked, headed up the stairs and met Tommy on the way down. His face went hard as soon as he saw her, and she felt hers do the same. How had it gotten this bad between them? She still remembered the sweet-faced kid who had tailed she and Frankie everywhere. When had he changed into the belligerent and rebellious teen who would come home hours after curfew reeking of whatever booze he'd managed to get his hands on? When had she given up on her baby brother?

"Tommy, I'm sorry," she said before he could say anything. "I shouldn't have said that shit to you."

His expression softened slightly: Jane rarely apologized without parental intervention. "Not like I haven't heard it before," he said with a shrug. "I know you don't believe it, but I do know how big of a fuckup I am."

"Tommy -" She let out a huff of air, feeling her heart twinge in her chest at the bitter, defeated look in his eyes. "You're not a fuckup. You fucked up. There's a difference."

"Is there?" He shook his head. "When I've been fucking up for so long that nobody – including me – thinks I can do anything right? I know that Mau – Dr. Isles is outta my league -"

"She is _not_ out of your league!" Jane shot back, the old protectiveness rising to the surface. "Tommy, you're smart, you've done your time, you can do -"

"Anything I want?" he finished for her with a sad smile. "Tell that to all the people who won't hire an ex-con. And just not fucking up isn't good enough...not when you're the baby brother of Wonder Woman and Batman."

"Aw, Tommy, c'mon! Don't buy into that crap!"

"Why not?" he challenged her, the bitter light back in his eyes. "Everybody else does. Ma, Pop, the papers. Frankie shoots some nutcase to save you. _You_ fucking shoot yourself to save him, and me?" He let out a reckless, wounded laugh. "I got drunk and ran over Father Crowley."

"Past tense, damn it!" she growled at him, irritated by the self-pity that she could hear in his voice. She wanted to kick his ass. She wanted to hug him. "You chose to drink, and that was what happened. You can choose to do something else now." If he didn't accept that his drinking had been a choice freely made, he'd never be able to grasp the converse: that _not_ drinking was an equally possible choice to be made.

"You don't get it." He shook his head again, bitterness deepening into the mix of anger and despair that had characterized his darkest moments from adolescence on. "You didn't _choose_ to shoot yourself. You couldn't have done anything else. It's who you are, what you are: carved in stone." He snorted. "Like me, except I'm carved in shit."

"Bullshit, you mean." She grabbed his arm as he tried to brush by her and down the stairs. "Any bullshit that gives you the excuse to crawl back into the bottle, say that you can't help it, it isn't your fault. Well shit on that, Tommy. Ma and Pop gave you everything they could, even after you started screwing up. Pop never raised a hand to any of us unless we earned it, and not even _that_ to you most of the time. All three of us were raised the same, have the same genes. The only difference between us is the choices that we made. Tommy, you can -"

"No. I. Can't." The look on his face simultaneously broke her heart and infuriated her. It was an expression of weary resignation, of defeat. The look of someone who was giving up the fight. She'd seen it every damn time he'd jumped off the wagon. "And you know it, so stop patronizing me by pretending you don't."

"So, I'm supposed to, what?" she inquired, hearing the sarcasm lacing her voice. "Buy your next bottle for you? Shit on that, too." She pulled out her phone, checked the time. Four thirty. Crap. "I gotta talk to Ma." She let go of his arm, started to turn away, then stopped, remembering why she needed to talk to her mother. "You might want to come up, hear what I have to tell her." He'd been one of Father Dan's favorites, had adored the man until adolescence had turned him into a sullen, rebellious brat whose only interests were drinking and fighting.

Tommy shook his head. "I gotta go," he mumbled, all the fight seeping out of him. "I got an appointment."

He could be a silver-tongued devil when he wanted, but he didn't even try to gild the lie this time. _An appointment with who?_ _Jim Beam, Johnnie Walker or Jack Daniels?_ The acidic query was on the tip of her tongue, but she held it back. Word would be reaching the streets soon, and she didn't want him hearing it that way.

"Tommy, there was a murder in the rectory at Sacred Heart," she began, taking two steps down, closer to him. "We don't have a solid ID yet, but we're pretty sure it's Father Dan." How many times had she done this? Broken the news to someone that their loved one had been taken from them in the worst way possible? The responses she'd seen ran the whole spectrum from denial to shattered grief to towering fury, but her brother's response startled her. His head jerked up, dark eyes suddenly wide and his face ghost-white.

"Wh-what?" He looked stunned, but there was something else, something that she couldn't quite get a handle on, hovering just beneath the surface. Fear?

She took another step, reaching out to him. "We don't have any leads yet, but it's early in the investigation. I promise you that we'll find out who did this. I know that you -"

"You don't know shit." The words came out in a strangled gasp, and he jerked away from her touch as if he'd been burned, then stumbled the rest of the way down the stairs. "I gotta go."

"Tommy, what the hell -" She stared after him, thinking she should go after him, stop him, handcuff him to the stairs before he went on another bender and got himself – or someone else – killed. Weary irritation welled up over the confusion. How long was she supposed to keep chasing after him, trying to do for him what he _had_ to do for himself?

_You're supposed to meet Maura in an hour. You might actually be able to fix __**that**__._

Her brother, or her best friend...who she'd said was no longer her friend?

_Shit, shit, shit._

Turning, she trudged up the stairs and into her apartment, where she was greeted by her mother's reproachful face.

"You heard?" Not really a question; she knew that Angela had likely kept her ear glued to the door for most of the conversation.

"Hard not to, the way you two were yelling," her mother sniffed, returning to the kitchen and beginning to wipe down counters.

Deciding not to get into another round of the same argument she'd been having since she was twenty, Jane opted to get straight to the point. "You heard about Father Dan, too?"

"I already knew." Her mother dabbed at her eyes. "Lorraine Tucci called just as Tommy left. I was coming to call him back when I heard you arguing with him."

Jane sighed, trying to decide whether to be irritated or relieved. _Telephone, telegraph, tell Lorraine._ It had been that way since her childhood. "We don't know for sure yet, Ma. It could be someone else, but...well, Father Dan hasn't shown up alive anywhere."

"So it's probably him." Angela shook her head. "Lorraine said that he'd been beaten to death. Who would want to do that to a priest? Some junkie, I'll bet, but it just goes to show -" She turned back around, her eyes on her eldest. "You never know what's gonna happen, so you can't waste your time on silly things."

Trust her mother to find a moral in murder. "Ma, I've done all that I know how to do for Tommy."

Angela huffed out an exasperated sigh. "Not Tommy, though God knows that I wish you kids could get along. I'm talking about _Maura_."

Of course she was. She'd been talking about little else since she'd moved in here. "I'm having dinner with her in forty-five minutes, Ma," Jane said, trying not to sound too hopeful about it. If it went anything like their other recent attempts at conversation, they'd be at each other's throats by the time the chili-cheese fries arrived.

But to Angela Rizzoli, said was as good as done. "Thank God, Janie!" she exclaimed, throwing her arms around her daughter. "You girls need to talk and get this worked out. You're both miserable, and it's not exactly been fun for the rest of us."

"I'm sorry, Ma." She disentangled herself from the maternal embrace. "Just...don't get your hopes up, okay? I'll ask her if you can move back into the guest house before I piss her off too much."

"Jane Clementine Rizzoli!" Jane winced at the detested middle name, but her mother ignored it. "Do you really think that's the only thing I want? I'd live in a box on the corner if it would make you happy."

_Mother as martyr. Scene one, take one._ She hadn't been simply trying to make Maura feel better when she'd told her that the mother she'd daydreamed about having was much like Maura's adoptive mother. She was willing to bet that Constance Isles never played the martyr card, while her own mother had the whole damn deck: a noble self-sacrifice for every occasion.

The grass was always greener, wasn't it? Maura had actually seemed to like Angela's smothering, which made Jane an even bigger bitch for forcing her mother to move out, damn it. "I don't want you living in a box on the corner, Ma," she asserted patiently. "And I know that you want Maura and me to be friends again." She moved to her couch and sank into the overstuffed cushions, realizing only after that she'd done so that she had taken her customary spot, where she always sat for their Friday night movie nights. Maura would take the other end, but by the middle of the first movie, she'd be curled up next to Jane with her head on the detective's shoulder.

The seemingly instinctive way that the doctor sought physical contact had been unnerving at first, until their conversations had revealed that Maura had gone most of her life without the casual hugs and horseplay that Jane took for granted growing up. No siblings, no close friends...not even her parents when she was at the fancy French boarding school. She'd accepted it then, more than a little touched by the trust that it implied, and somewhere along the line, she'd gotten used to it. And its absence now gave her some idea – just an inkling, perhaps – of what Maura's life of isolation had been like.

She sank deeper into the sofa, weighted down by a sudden wave of despondency. "I just don't know if it's gonna happen," she mumbled, swallowing against the tightness in her throat. "I may have fucked things up too much already."

"Language, young lady." The scolding had no real bite to it, and Angela settled beside her daughter with a tender expression. "And I remember when you had that big fight with Beth Capellino, and you said you'd never be friends again. You remember?"

"I was in fifth grade, Ma," Jane reminded her. They'd been fighting over – oh, God, had it really been Joey Grant? Beth had decided he was cute, but he was still calling Jane 'Roly-poly Rizzoli'. Major drama there. "And I hadn't shot Beth's father." She also hadn't spoken to Beth in years, but she didn't want to bring that up right now. Her friendship with Beth had faded over time and distance, but how in the hell was that going to happen with Maura, when she had to interact with her nearly every damn day on the job?

Angela caught Jane's chin, turned her head until they were eye to eye. "You did what you had to do," she said, her words measured and firm, and a fierce maternal pride burning in her eyes. "Maura knows that."

"Then why can't we talk?" Jane cried out, frustration overflowing. "Either she says something that sets me off, or I say something that sets her off...it's like we both can't stop trying to hurt each other." She dropped her head into her hands, fingers tangling in her hair. "What is wrong with us? What's wrong with _me_?"

Her mother pried one of her hands out of her hair and folded it into both of her own. "You know, a few years back, when your father and I were going through a rough spot, we went to a marriage counselor."

"I didn't know that." Jane turned her head, regarding her mother with an inquisitive arch of one eyebrow. "And you're telling me this now because...?"

"He told us that fighting with someone gets to be a habit. To break that habit, you gotta think back to when you first met that person, think what drew you to them then, what made you care about them."

"Really, Ma?" Jane pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to think of a tactful way of proceeding. "First, Maura and I aren't married. Or dating." _Screw tact._ "And it didn't exactly work for you and Pop, did it?"

"That's because your father is a bastard," Angela replied serenely. "Which you are not, all your father's efforts to the contrary." Jane felt her lips tug into a faint smile. Hell would freeze over before Frank Rizzoli got his annulment, which suited her just fine. "And the counselor said that it applies to all relationships, not just marriages." She leaned closer. "What you've got with Maura is special. You remember how you always wanted a sister when you were little? You've got one now; are you just gonna let that go?"

"That...may not be my choice, Ma."

"No?" Angela cocked her head knowingly. "Whose idea was dinner?"

Jane drew a breath, let it out. "Maura's. But -"

"No buts." Her mother waggled a finger in her face, then settled back into the sofa. "Go on. Tell me how you met her."

Jane glanced at the time, calculated the drive. "All right, Cliff Notes version. I was working undercover for Narcotics, on loan from Vice. And if you're a woman trying to make a buy, you gotta be a hooker."

Angela's mouth fell open in dismay and her face blanched. "Sweet baby Jesus, tell me they didn't make you -"

"_No_! Geez, Ma!" Jane shook her head, managing not to laugh. "Nothing like that. I just had to look the part to make the buy, and I forgot my money, and -" She told the story: arguing with Stanley about floating her a cup of his lousy coffee, the elegantly dressed stranger who had offered to pay for her and offered a bit of dietary advice along with the cash. Angela giggled, and the memory even drew a rusty sounding laugh from Jane.

"I had no idea who she was until a couple of weeks later when I visited the morgue on a case." She sobered at that. She'd been so close to getting Lisa into rehab, off the streets. She knew that she couldn't save them all, but shit...sometimes it felt like she couldn't save any of them. "She cared, Ma," she said quietly, combing her hair back with her fingers. "You could tell that it wasn't just a dead body to her. She cared enough to ask for the victim's real name: not because it would help her determine cause of death, but because she wanted to know what to call her." She shrugged, giving her mother a wan smile. "I offered to buy her dinner if she found anything that would help us nail the pimp for the murder...and she did."

It had been a trip. Maura had been as wide-eyed as a kid at the circus, taking in everything about the Dirty Robber with a mixture of clinical fascination and an almost childlike wonder that had Rizzoli watching her in bemusement. Halfway through a dissertation on the history of beer, the doctor had broken off, looking suddenly embarrassed.

"_I'm boring you, aren't I?" she asked in a halting voice, looking so damn crestfallen that Jane probably would have denied it even if it had been true._

"_No, you're not," Jane assured her, "but...you know all this about beer, and you've never had one?"_

_Maura blinked, seeming to realize the dichotomy for the first time. "Well, I did have beer in Africa once, but it wasn't like this at all. The natives break down the grains for fermentation by chewing them up and spitting them out, and the yeasts are wild, so there is no real consistency to the end product, and it is served warm, drunk through reed straws. Oh, and there's more particulate matter." She took another sip. "It's likely the same way the earliest beers and ales were made."_

"_Sounds...yummy." Jane tried to summon something resembling enthusiasm for the notion, but - "Okay, no, it sounds utterly gross. I'll stick with my friend Sam, here." She tipped the bottle toward the Medical Examiner before taking a long pull._

"_It really wasn't bad," Maura protested, "but this does taste better." She offered a shy, hesitant smile that had an answering smile tugging at the corners of Jane's mouth for reasons she couldn't quite explain._

"_Something to be said for technology," Jane agreed, reaching out to lightly clink their bottles together._

_And that was enough to set her off again. "Did you know that the custom of toasting originated as a way of ensuring that a drink wasn't poisoned? Originally, the cups were brought together and the contents mixed, but over time, it changed to simply clinking the glass together -"_

Angela laughed delightedly. "That sounds like Maura, all right."

"Yeah, classic Google-mouth," Jane murmured, smiling in spite of the ache in her chest, the cold fear that she'd never hear the endless stream of factoids again. "I didn't see much of her after that, though, until I got promoted to Homicide, and we didn't really get to be friends until -" She broke off, her right thumb rubbing reflexively over her left palm.

Her mother's hand covered hers. "Hoyt?" Angela asked softly, and when Jane looked up, there was sadness in those eyes, the pain that any mother felt for a daughter's torment, but there was something else, too: a glint of something hard and dangerous, and for the first time, Jane Rizzoli realized that she might not have gotten her kickass impulses from her father.

She nodded, gripping her mother's hand and swallowing. For the longest time, she hadn't let anyone touch her hands, the scars that Hoyt had left. "It was my first case after coming off of medical leave," she began softly...

"_Detective Rizzoli?"_

_She jerked her head up, suddenly aware that she'd been staring at her hands, her left thumb rubbing hard over the scar in the center of her right palm, that her eyes had dropped as soon as the scalpel had flashed silver in the overhead lights. Her heart was pounding and her chest felt too tight, every breath forced through her windpipe._

_The hazel eyes of the Medical Examiner held no trace of censure: only concern, compassion, and she dropped her hands, squared her shoulders with a defiant nod. "Sorry. I'm fine." _

_She could feel Crowe looming beside her, feel his smirk. Why the hell had he been made her partner? Oh, yeah...because she didn't want to be paired with Korsak again, didn't want the veteran detective to have to trust his back to the partner whose ass he'd had to save from Charles Hoyt. So she got Darren Crowe and his resentment that she and Korsak had been the ones to catch Hoyt, like getting pinned to the floor by scalpels had been a big publicity stunt on her part._

"_You need to get some air, Rizzoli?" he inquired with mock solicitousness._

_She shook her head, gritted her teeth, said nothing, keeping her eyes fixed on the corpse, not quite looking at the scalpel poised over the dead flesh._

_Dr. Isles watched her for a moment longer, then returned her attention to the autopsy. "Cause of death seems to be manual strangulation, with bilateral fractures of the hyoid bone. Preliminary toxicology results should be available tomorrow, and I'm hoping that her stomach contents will give us an idea of her whereabouts in the hours before she was killed."_

_She made the first line of the Y-incision, skin parting to reveal the underlying fat and muscle. Jane felt her head start to swim._

"_Razor sharp," Crowe purred in her ear. "Just look at that baby cut."_

_Her hands curled into fists, and she was on the verge of spinning and throwing a punch at the bastard when Dr. Isles' voice cut through the air as cleanly as any scalpel._

"_Detective Crowe, I don't really think I need both of you observing the autopsy. I'm sure you have other tasks that you can be completing." The words were polite, but the dismissal was clear. _

_Crowe glowered at her, then turned and lumbered out, "Try not to pass out, Rizzoli," fading in his wake._

_Jane couldn't decide whether to be embarrassed or grateful. She'd never needed anyone to fight her battles before, damn it, but first Korsak had to save her from Hoyt, and now - "You probably should've let him be the one to stay," she muttered, looking at the floor again. "If you just want to give us the report when you're done -"_

"_No, I don't think so." The calm statement stopped her in mid-turn, and she glanced up warily, wondering if the Medical Examiner harbored a well concealed streak of cruelty, but the eyes that met hers held only a gentle and cautious inquiry._

_Dr. Isles set her scalpel aside, removed her rubber gloves and stepped around the table, her thoughtful gaze fixed on the detective. Without warning, she took one of Rizzoli's hands in both of her own and turned it palm-up, her fingers brushing gently over the raised and still-red scar._

"_These wounds must have damaged both the flexor and extensor tendons, as well as the nerves, " she said quietly. "I'd imagine that it took time for you to regain function."_

_Jane nodded, startled by the unexpected contact. She hadn't let anyone touch her hands, even her therapist, but the doctor's touch was careful, her face and tone devoid of the pity and morbid fascination that her scars seemed to invoke in most people (she'd had an offer to pose naked in a fucking porn mag, scarred hands on full display, for Christ's sake). "Three months," she said, her voice feeling rusty. She didn't talk much these days. She didn't do much of anything these days, except wake up screaming from the nightmares. That was a regular occurrence. _

_Dr. Isles nodded. "Injuries like this normally take several months before significant function is restored." She circled the scar lightly with her thumb, mimicking Rizzoli's earlier action. "You're strong, determined. And Detective Crowe is a misogynistic Neanderthal...although that is an insult to Neanderthals. They were actually a very advanced species with a complex social structure that included -" She stopped suddenly, the look of embarrassment back on her face. "I'm sorry," she murmured, starting to withdraw her hands, but Jane caught one, folding her fingers around it._

"_It's all right," she said quietly. Something about that childlike look of embarrassment stirred in her an impulse to protect its owner, which, considering she hadn't even felt capable of protecting herself since she'd busted into that basement and been cold-cocked with a two-by-four, was a welcome change. "Asshole is a pretty good, all-purpose descriptive for guys like Crowe, by the way," she added with a lopsided smile that actually felt semi-genuine. "And the real assholes won't be insulted."_

_Maura smiled back warmly. "I'll remember that," she promised, drawing her hand gently from Jane's and returning to the autopsy table. "Have you ever heard of immersion therapy?" she asked, picking up the scalpel and meeting Jane's eyes, gauging her reaction._

_The detective nodded. She'd read a lot about overcoming fear in the last few weeks; she wondered just how many of the authors had ever experienced real fear._

_The Medical Examiner continued. "It is a proven therapeutic technique that has shown a great deal of success in treating phobias."_

"_I know that," Jane conceded, feeling oddly calm. If anyone else had called the gut-clenching fear that plagued her a phobia, she'd have ripped them a few new orifices. "But a phobia is generally considered to be a persistent fear to a degree that is disproportional to the danger actually posed." She held up her hands, palms out. "You tell me."_

"_Point taken," Maura conceded apologetically, "but the technique is still valid, if you would like to try it." _

"_Here?" Jane looked around. "Aren't I a little...alive...to be one of your patients?"_

"_I will admit that I'm not a psychiatrist," the M.E. Said, "but I am a licensed physician, so I can work on living patients if need be, and I have done extensive study on immersion therapy." She looked suddenly shy as she finished, and Jane realized that at least some of that study had been done with her in mind._

"_Why?" she asked bluntly, defensiveness flaring up._

_The hazel eyes were guileless. "You went into that basement to save that young woman," Maura said earnestly. "You weren't even thinking about your own safety, and you'll bear the physical scars for that act of courage for the rest of your life. You shouldn't have to live with the mental scars, as well."_

_Jane opened her mouth, closed it again. Did real people talk like that? And it wasn't courage; it was stupid, crazy, reckless and completely against the book, but she couldn't seem to speak up to say so, to scoff or give a cynical laugh. Not with someone that she was pretty sure was a genius standing there looking at her with the shining wonder of a child, very plainly believing everything she'd just said. Scoffing or laughing would bring that look of pained embarrassment back, and she realized that she didn't want that._

_She drew a deep breath, staring down at her hands. What did she have to lose? She couldn't stand the departmental headshrinker they had her visiting three times a week right now. "What do you want me to do?"_

_A pleased smile as guileless as the eyes had been, like a little girl who had just been given what she wanted. "I'll teach you some relaxation techniques as soon as we're done with this autopsy," she promised, "but for now, just come here, if you're comfortable doing that."_

_Jane nodded, approached the table, stepping around to Maura's side at the doctor's urging and donning a pair of rubber gloves, her eyes drawn to the scalpel._

"_Can you touch it?" Maura was beside her, her voice calm, soothing._

"_Yeah." It was a fucking inanimate object. She could by-God touch it. She stared at it laying on the instrument tray, gleaming up at her in silent challenge, seeing the silver gleam in a very different light: the yellow glow of a low-watt basement bulb swaying overhead in the instant before the scalpel descended and agony flared through the terror. She reached out and snatched it up, her hand curling into a trembling fist._

"_Here." Gentle hands surrounded hers, loosening her grip, guiding her fingers into a proper hold. "We can stop with this, if you like. You can watch while I finish."_

"_No." Her voice was hoarse. "I want to do this. I want -" She wanted herself back, wanted to stop being afraid all the time. She swallowed hard, found her voice again. "Please?"_

"_All right." Maura stayed beside her, her hand on Jane's. "This is how you hold it, with the blade perpendicular to the flesh. This is a tool." Hazel eyes turned up to her face, making certain she understood. "Just like your firearm. Nothing more or less. Good, evil...that lies in the way that each is used." She guided Jane's hand through the next line of the Y-incision. "Today, we are going to use this scalpel to give this young woman a voice, to find out who killed her."_

Jane felt the tears on her face, and wasn't surprised to see that her mother's cheeks were damp, as well. Angela Rizzoli turned on the waterworks at the drop of a hat.

"I needed her," she said softly. "I don't know if I would have made it back to where I am now without her, but...she needed me, too. We...fit, somehow." She dropped her head. "And I'm so fucking scared that I've blown that all to hell."

"Oh, honey." Gentle arms enfolded her, and she buried her face against her mother's shoulder. God, how had Maura gone all her life without this? "I watched you hurting, and I couldn't help you, and it just about killed me. You wouldn't let me even touch your hands. I knew that Maura helped you, but -" The embrace tightened to just shy of painful, and then her mother was holding her by the shoulders, peering into her face. "You go talk to her, do whatever you need to do to make it right. She's hurting too, honey. Just talk to her, hug her. You can work this out, just like Clairee and Ouiser."

A ragged laugh escaped her. "She told you about that?"

"Oh, yes. You made her so happy when you told her that. You know what she told me? That she'd never had a friend before. A real friend. Not until you."

Jane felt her heart break. "And I took it back," she whispered, hearing the cold words in her memory. _I'm blood, __**she's**__ water. _"Oh, God, Ma, how could I have said that to her? You don't take back family."

"No. You don't." Angela kept her from sagging back into the sofa. "You both said things that you regret, but the only reason that you could hurt each other so much is that you love each other so much." A gentle push. "Go. Make it right. I want both my girls back and happy."

Jane pushed herself to her feet, checked the time. Skip the shower, then. "How bad do I look?"

"You look beautiful." Why did she bother asking that? She glanced in a mirror, grimaced and used her fingers to chase her hair into something resembling order. It would have to do. Hopefully the puffy eyes would fade between here and the Robber.

"Back later."

"Bring Maura with you," Angela suggested brightly. "We'll watch a movie."

Jane paused at the door, smiling at her mother. "Maybe," she said softly, to herself as much as to Angela.

She was almost to her car when her phone rang. "Rizzoli."

"You need to come back to Sacred Heart." Korsak. "We got something."

She checked the time, muttered something indecent. "Can it wait for a couple of hours?"

"No. It can't." She could hear the tension in his voice now, and that brought her instincts screaming to the front. It took a lot to shake up Korsak at a crime scene.

"I'm on my way," she promised, opening the door and dropping into the driver's seat. She briefly debated calling Maura, telling her she'd be late, but told herself that she'd just pop in, see what was up and pop out again, call Maura then to tell her she was on her way, and there would be whatever break Korsak and Frost had to smooth the path. Maura knew what police work was like, she'd be as interested in any new developments as Jane would.

Just a few minutes couldn't hurt, could it?


	5. The Shattering

When Jane arrived back at Sacred Heart, she was greeted by the sight of an ambulance parked outside, lights blazing.

_What the hell?_

She exited the sedan just as the paramedics emerged from the rectory pushing a gurney with a blanketed form strapped in; beneath the oxygen mask, she could make out the pale, pinched features of Father Andrew.

She flashed her badge. "What happened?" He'd looked shaky when she left, but he'd been upright.

"Looks like a massive coronary," one of the paramedics replied without stopping. "Your people were doing CPR on him when we got there, took three shocks to get a sinus rhythm. He's stable, but just barely. Gotta go."

"Yeah, sure." She stepped away as they loaded him, striding toward the open door of the rectory. Inside, she came face to face with Queen Bea, who seemed to have shrunken since she'd seen her last.

"Jane." _That_ got her attention. She'd been 'Miss Rizzoli' from kindergarten onward. The nun's face was pale enough that Rizzoli almost called the paramedics back to give her a once-over, and the hand that reached out to the detective was trembling visibly. "Jane, as the Lord is my witness, I didn't know. Father Andrew didn't know."

Oh, this could _not_ be good. "Didn't know about what?" Beatrice withdrew her hand, looking almost fearful, folding it with her other in a prayerful gesture.

"We had no idea."

"About what?" Impatience and the growing stirrings of alarm sharpened her voice, but the nun just shook her head and wrung her hands, looking so shattered that Rizzoli actually felt sorry for her, which was entirely too weird, so she stepped past her and headed down the hall to Father Daniel's apartment.

"What the hell -" She broke off when she realized that Cavanaugh had joined Korsak and Frost, the three of them looking at her with expressions that made her stomach bottom out. "What's going on? You had to do CPR on Father Andrew? What happened?"

"Why don't you sit down, Jane?" Frost suggested, gesturing to the brown sofa with a careful look that irritated the hell out of her.

"I don't need to sit down," she shot back, "unless heart attacks are contagious."

"Jane." Vince's voice held a note of firmness that was rare when he spoke to her. "Sit. Please."

She glanced at him warily, the sharp retort dying on her lips when she saw how pale he was. She nodded wordlessly and dropped onto the sofa.

Lieutenant Cavanaugh looked at her, his face as grim as she'd ever seen it. "Nobody else is to know about what we're gonna show you, Detective. You can brief Dr. Isles, but _nobody_ else, you understand?"

"Understood." The single word took an effort to utter; her mouth had suddenly gone sandpaper dry.

Cavanaugh nodded, his expression shifting into something that scared Rizzoli worse than anything she'd seen or heard yet. Sean Cavanaugh was a stand-up cop and a hard-as-nails commanding officer. If you were right, he'd have your back all the way to the governor and beyond, but God help you if you did something stupid or reckless that got him called onto the carpet. She'd been on both sides of that line, but she'd never seen him look like this. He looked shaken. They all did.

"Bring them," he said curtly, and Frost lifted a cardboard box from the desk against the wall, holding it gingerly, with the look on his face that he normally only wore at the worst of the crime scenes now: he looked like he was about to blow his lunch on the floor, but he looked pissed, too, his deep brown eyes hard.

"False bottoms in all of the drawers in the bedroom dresser," he told her flatly. "Looks like a custom job; I almost missed it, maybe an inch of storage in each." It didn't make her feel any better about having missed it on her own search, though she'd only looked long enough to confirm that the contents of the drawers appeared undisturbed.

Part of her was expecting it now: what would a priest have to hide that could fit into an inch-deep hiding spot? But it was still like a hard punch to the gut when she accepted the box, looked inside.

Pictures. Dozens of them. Hundreds. Polaroids and what looked to be prints of digital photos. Boys. Little boys.

"Jesus." She didn't know if it was a prayer or an oath. She was barely aware of Barry saying something about a digital camera and printer found, a computer missing, but the thunder of her own heart in her ears drowned it out. Her hands reached into the box, sifted through the images, her breath rasping in her throat. She'd seen shit like this when she'd worked with Vice, she knew it happened, knew there were freaks like this in the world, but this was Father Dan, and – _shit_ – she knew that kid...and that one...and...

"Oh, _shit_!" The words escaped her in a breathless wheeze, because it was _Tommy's_ face staring back at her from the Polaroid in her hands, the gap in his front teeth dating it to when he'd been ten or so, his expression shy, uncertain, but the smile so sweetly trusting that she wanted to cry, because she remembered that smile, remembered seeing it all the time when he'd been a kid, but she hadn't seen it in years now, decades, because it had started to vanish sometime during puberty...

_Between the ages of eight and twelve, right after Father Dan came here, started coaching Little League, right after Tommy spent so much time with him, and you took him there, you dropped him off, you left him alone with Father Dan, left him alone so that bastard could do __**this**__..._

The box hit the floor, pictures scattering as she launched herself from the couch, diving for the bathroom and barely making it, hitting the floor beside the toilet hard as the scant food she'd eaten today came back with a vengeance, the dry heaves wracking her long after her gut was empty, until spots danced in her vision and it seemed inevitable that the next spasm would bring up blood.

She could feel someone beside her, knew it was Korsak; he was the only one of the three who would have approached her when she was like this, because he'd already seen her at her worst, her weakest and most vulnerable. For a long time, she'd been convinced that he couldn't possibly still respect her after that, still be able to trust her with his back after seeing her completely broken, but she'd been wrong, because Korsak was gold, he was the kind of guy that she'd always thought her father was, someone that took care of his own, and she'd trusted him more than anyone but Maura, but this...

She curled away from the hand on her shoulder with a wordless growl, arms folded around her stomach, her forehead pressed hard against the porcelain rim, the stench of puke strong in her nose, unwanted images flashing in her mind's eye.

"That bastard," she said in a hoarse gasp, pulling away from the toilet to lean against the wall beside the door. Her wild eyes met Korsak's, saw her own fury reflected there, but tightly controlled, in stark contrast to the wildfire that was searing her mind. "That son of a bitch."

How could she not have seen? How could she not have known? How could nobody have fucking _known_? There'd never been a hint, a whisper._ How?_

"I know." Korsak's voice was controlled, low. "I know, Jane, but he's dead, and we've got a whole lot of suspects that we've gotta rule in or out now."

"Rizzoli." Cavanaugh stood just outside the bathroom, looking uncomfortable as hell. "Do you know where your brother is? Or where he was last night between ten and midnight?"

That got her back on her feet. "Tommy didn't do this," she said heatedly, feeling her hands curling into fists.

Cavanaugh didn't back down. "He's a suspect, just like every other kid whose picture is in that box," he replied, his voice level and a hell of a lot gentler than it usually was when she challenged him, "until we know for sure he's got an alibi. Do you know where he was last night?"

"No." She shook her head. "But I saw him this afternoon, I told him that the guy was dead." She couldn't call him Father Dan; not now, not ever again. "His face...he wasn't faking it, sir. He didn't know...and he couldn't have done it. He's not violent...not like this." He'd been in fights when he was younger, but the damage she had seen had been the result of a sustained fury that she'd never seen in her baby brother.

_She_ could have done it, she suspected, but not Tommy. She'd had doubts when his fingerprints had turned up in that van, tying him to the bank robbery, because she could see him doing something that fucking stupid, but this...no. Not Tommy.

"Even if he'd been drinking?" Korsak said apologetically.

She glared at him. "He hasn't touched the stuff since he got out, and drunk or sober, he couldn't have done it." Not Tommy. No way. It would destroy their mother.

"Then we need to talk to him ASAP, get him cleared so we can focus on finding the one who did." The words made sense, and she felt herself relax marginally, but the tension returned with interest at Cavanaugh's next words:

"Rizzoli, I know this is gonna be hard for you, but I need you to look at those pictures, identify as many of those boys as you can so we can start looking them up. We asked the older priest before you got here and...well, you saw what happened."

"No fucking wonder," she muttered, though she honestly couldn't help but wonder: could it really have been going on all this time without Father Andrew suspecting anything? Or Queen Bea? Shit, that woman knew _everything_! Who was dating who, who'd been caught out past curfew, who was really sick and who was just faking it. Could that vigilant eye really have missed who was getting molested by one of the priests? _Not fucking likely,_ she thought bitterly, but she nodded, returned to the living room couch, sank back onto the sofa and descended back into hell.

She sorted through the photos, her voice a mechanical recitation, her mind screaming in rage. "Eric Malone...Anthony Capellino," _Beth's little brother...Jesus Christ, he killed himself his junior year!_ "Darren Smith...Charlie Grant." _Joey's kid brother_...her head was spinning. In the end, she could identify a dozen or so of the kids by name, another handful that looked familiar...leaving at least two dozen unidentified in close to two hundred photos. Frankie didn't show up in any of them, nor did Joey, but there were several pictures of Tommy, starting when he was nine or so, with the last one looking like it had been taken shortly after he'd turned thirteen. She forced herself to focus only on his face, seeing the shift from the bright eyed, innocently grinning child to the wary kid who was clearly forcing his smile, his eyes haunted.

"All of these look like they were on his baseball teams," Frost murmured, standing before the photos on the wall. "If we can find the team rosters for each year, we should be able to come up with more names."

"We're gonna have to talk to them all, anyway," Korsak added. "There may be more victims that he didn't photograph, more pictures that we haven't found yet."

"Yeah," Frost agreed somberly. "I'm gonna check the rest of the furniture over again."

Jane stuffed the photos back in the box and pushed it aside savagely as Frost disappeared back into the bedroom. She could feel the pressure mounting: rage, grief, guilt...all of it demanding an outlet that she didn't have. If Daniel Murtaugh had been alive, she'd likely have lost her badge by now...but he was dead. She'd never been good at introspective bullshit; she needed to act, needed to do something, needed to get the hell out of here. Everywhere she looked in the little apartment, she recognized settings from the pictures. Right here was where it happened. Right here was where Tommy -

She shot to her feet, feeling the emotions fighting their way to the surface. She couldn't lose it here. "I gotta find Tommy," she muttered, dragging her fingers through her hair. "I gotta...gotta..." She trailed off, drawing deep breaths through her nose as she started for the door.

"Rizzoli." Cavanaugh's voice arrested her forward motion, and she turned back to the lieutenant, fighting the feeling that she was about to burst out of her skin. "Given the personal angle, I should probably keep you off this case, _but_ -" He held up a hand to forestall the protest. "I'm going to need all hands on deck for this. We've got twenty-plus years of Little League teams to interview, and once this hits the press, we're gonna be in one hell of a pressure cooker. That said, I'm also gonna need everyone functioning normally, so if you don't feel that you can do that, you can sit this out. The Kapersky homicide still needs attention."

_Fuck. No._ "No, sir," she managed, shaking her head, "I want to stay on this case." She swallowed hard, forcing all the emotions into submission, tamping them down hard, locking them away. She was used to it, wasn't she? Being what she needed to be, was expected to be, had to be. She'd done it for years, until -

_Shit. Maura._ She checked the time. Six o'clock. "I want to do this. Please, sir. I'm scheduled to meet Dr. Isles; I can brief her, then come back here and help Korsak and Frost finish processing the scene." The thought of Maura had dread warring with a desperate hope. A month ago, she wouldn't have thought twice about heading straight to the sanctuary of the doctor's company and letting loose with everything. Maura would listen, let her fall apart, then pick her up and put her back together with understanding words and a hug. She'd become the safety valve, the buffer that Jane relied on, but now -

_She asked you to dinner. She __**wants**__ to talk. She'll listen, she'll know what to say to get your head back together. Maybe she'll even know where Tommy is._

Cavanaugh nodded slowly. "All right, Rizzoli, but don't make me regret this. Brief Dr. Isles, tell her that we need anything she can find on that body, and we need it yesterday. Then get your ass back here, understood?"

"Understood, sir. Thank you, sir."

The lieutenant waited until Rizzoli was gone before turning to Korsak. "You keep an eye on her. She starts looking like she's on the edge, we pull her off this. She's good, but this..." He shook his head. "If the piece of shit wasn't already dead, I'd never let her near the case. I'm hoping that letting her be the one who briefs Dr. Isles doesn't wind up biting me in the ass."

"I don't think it will, Sean," Korsak told him. "They've been pissed at each other, yeah, but something like this..." He didn't know Maura Isles as well as he did Rizzoli, but he couldn't conceive of her not responding to Jane in her current state, particularly when she'd been the one to suggest dinner in the first place. "If anything will get them talking to each other again, this will do it."

Cavanaugh nodded, looking unconvinced. "Go through his files, see if you can find any old team rosters, then get everything in here that's not nailed down packaged up and back to Evidence. I'm gonna head out and work with the Public Information Office to get a release ready for the press."

* * *

At five forty-five, Maura looked at her phone for the tenth time, confirming that Jane had not tried to call, and debating trying to reach the detective. She set it back on the table. It wasn't unusual for Jane to be running late, though she usually called to give a heads-up. But that was _before_.

Strange, the human need to compartmentalize time, divide it into defined periods. Knowing of the tendency, she had fallen into it anyway. It had only been a vague sense once, separating her life into before she had met Jane and after she and the lanky detective had become friends. Now, 'before' had an entirely new and painful set of meanings. Before Jane had shot Paddy Doyle. Before Maura had lashed out in pain and confusion. Before Jane had said they were no longer friends. The 'after' in this new period in her life would not be as simple as going back to the before when she had never met Jane Rizzoli. The detective had permeated every aspect of her life: her job; the friends that she had made; the family that she had begun to consider her own; her own house with the beer in the refrigerator, the All-ESPN subscription on the cable, the Red Sox coasters on the tables and Jane's clothes in the dresser in the guest bedroom.

What if Jane had changed her mind about meeting her for dinner...or had never intended to show up in the first place? The thought triggered another spike in stress, shunting blood away from her digestive system to supply musculature for a fight-or-flight response that would not take place, resulting in the characteristic feeling of nausea. She knew the reasons, knew the chemicals that underlay the emotions, but that did not stop the emotions themselves as unwanted memories crowded in, worsening the churning sensation beneath her ribs:

_Peering from behind the curtain at the audience, looking for her mother's face. She had been practicing for weeks to dance in Don Quixote, and though she had not won the role of Dulcinea (her instructor, while praising her technical skill, said that she lacked the passion to dance the part), the part of Antonina was a step up from the corps de ballet. Constance had praised her daughter effusively over the phone, promising repeatedly to attend the premiere. She was there...somewhere. Maura just couldn't see her in the glare of the lights. Not until after she had danced did her instructor give her the message: unavoidable delay, so sorry, love and kisses._

_OOO_

_Hurrying to catch up with the group of girls who had befriended her the past few weeks, not wanting to make them wait for her. They were popular, cool, and they had been so nice to her, eating lunch with her every day and inviting her to study sessions after class. As she drew close, she could hear them talking:_

"_Did we lose her?"_

"_Honestly, do we have to have lunch with her again?"_

"_It's just until the chemistry final. You want to pass, don't you?"_

_OOO_

_Her first lover, when she'd been sixteen. So tender and attentive, until after he'd coaxed her into surrendering her virginity to him, then suddenly refusing to even look at her. One of her classmates smiling spitefully as she informed her that he'd done it on a bet._

She had learned: better to be alone than to be where you are not wanted. She couldn't call Jane, couldn't bear to hear the awkward excuses or, worse, the cold truth.

"_Dr. Isles and I are no longer friends."_

She hurriedly finished her glass of wine, ordered another. She was thirty-eight: a grown woman, two decades past the traumas of her adolescent years, but the past few weeks had put her back into that emotional roller-coaster, plagued by the niggling voice of doubt telling her that for all her accomplishments: her education, her expertise, the awards and accolades, the peer-reviewed journal publications, she was still not good enough, still Maura the Bore-a.

Still alone.

_Then so be it,_ she thought grimly. She would not sit here and wallow in self-pity. She would drink another glass of wine and take a cab home. She would go to work tomorrow and treat Jane Rizzoli with the respect accorded a fellow professional: nothing more or less. And she would update her curriculum vitae, start looking for positions elsewhere. Europe, maybe.

Her phone rang. She snatched it up without looking at the caller ID. "Jane?"

Not Jane. The hospital: the quiet, compassionate voice of Patrick Doyle's physician.

Unexpected complication. Thromboembolism from the wound site. Cerebrovascular accident with extensive ischemia. Coma. Prognosis uncertain.

She nodded, made her replies, her own voice sounding a million miles away. She was informed that Doyle had named her as next-of-kin, given her limited power of attorney over his medical care. After a brief, professional consultation with the physician, she instructed him to maintain support for forty-eight hours, then re-evaluate, with a DNR in place, should independent heart and lung function cease. Any suitable organs should be donated.

She hung up, feeling vaguely pleased with the calm way she had dealt with the situation...and then the emotions slammed into her like an avalanche, leaving her reeling in their wake.

Her father was in a coma, might never come out of it, because of her. Jane had shot him, but he'd been in that warehouse to protect his daughter. He was a mobster, a killer, the antithesis of everything she believed in...but he was her _father_, and he'd been there all her life, loving her from afar. And Jane had shot him, and now he could die, taking the identity of Maura's birth mother to the grave with him, along with the answers to all the other questions she'd been asking all her life.

She wasn't used to this kind of turbulence in the normally orderly spaces of her mind, and despite the fact that it had become the norm in the past few weeks, she hadn't grown acclimated to the feeling of being out of control of herself. If anything, it was growing more intolerable by the day. A month ago, she would have gone to Jane, blurted out everything, and Jane would have teased her about malfunctioning cyborgs, and talked with her, and drawn her into some mindless activity: watching a movie, playing basketball, going out to eat, and in a remarkably short period of time, her mind would be calm again, settled by the simple fact of her friend's presence.

But Jane was part of the cause of the current turmoil, and she obviously wasn't coming to the Robber tonight. Dropping a twenty on the table, Maura pushed herself out of the booth that had become theirs over the past few months, thoughts of a second glass of wine pushed aside by the need to be out of here, away in search of someplace where being alone wouldn't trigger painful memories of a time when she had not been.

The single glass she had consumed was not overly impairing, and the phone call from the hospital had sobered her as effectively as a dousing with cold water. She fumbled in her purse as she left the bar, pulling out her keys while making her way to her Prius.

"Maura!" The familiar voice brought with it an instinctive surge of relief. She had come. "Maur!" She turned to see Jane running toward her, and relief shifted to surprise, then concern. Jane looked awful: face pale, eyes wide, hair in disarray, and the doctor felt a sudden rise of alarm. Had something happened to Angela?

"Jane, what -"

"Do you know where Tommy is?" Jane demanded as she reached her.

Maura stared at the detective, alarm giving way to disappointment, then to irritation. "Jane, regardless of what you think, Tommy and I don't spend a great deal of time together." She hadn't come for Maura at all, but for her own agenda, the way she had when she had come to the hospital to ask her to withhold information from Internal Affairs.

"This is important, Maur," Jane insisted. As though the mess that their friendship had turned into wasn't. "That priest...Frost and Korsak found photos he'd hidden. He'd been abusing boys for years! One of them -" She stopped, fighting visibly for control. "Maura, one of them was Tommy." Her voice broke on her brother's name.

Maura would spend hours analyzing the next few seconds. In retrospect, she realized that the painful memories that had been stirred up had triggered a defensive response that had combined with her guilt and conflicting emotions regarding Patrick Doyle's condition to leave her feeling even more insecure than was normal for her. It was easy after the fact to recognize in herself the need – immature as it was - to prove that she had the same power to hurt Jane that Jane had over her.

In the moment, however, there was only her own voice, distant and cold, coming seemingly from nowhere: "So, you're telling me that while you have spent the last several years criticizing your brother mercilessly for his drinking and self-destructive behaviors, he has been struggling with untreated post-traumatic stress as the result of being sexually abused by a priest who was trusted by your family, most likely at least in part during visits that you dropped him off for?"

No. She hadn't just said that, had she? She didn't want to believe it, but the proof was before her in Jane's face. The last of the color drained from it, and Maura Isles saw another human being shattering before her eyes, until the wall came back up.

"Yeah," Jane said tonelessly, backing up a step, then another, her eyes haunted. "Yeah, I guess that pretty much sums it up." Another step away and then she turned, walking quickly, then breaking into a run. Maura stood frozen, trying to convince herself that it couldn't have been her that had spoken the words that had torn into her friend as brutally as a bullet. The slamming of a car door, the savage roar of an accelerator being jammed to the floor and the scream of rubber on asphalt broke her stasis, but by then, it was too late.

Jane was gone.

* * *

_Author's Note: I was watching the special features section on the Season 3 DVDs last night. Janet Tamaro was talking about the first couple of episodes of the season being a look at the relationship between closeness and conflict: saying hurtful things without even understanding why you are saying them to someone you care about. That's really what the first few chapters of this story are focused on, except that I seem to be a bit more sadistic than JTam._

_I've definitely been there: wanting to hurt someone just to prove that you can hurt them as much as they hurt you. That mixed feeling of spiteful satisfaction and horrified disbelief when you succeed. It's utterly irrational, completely self-destructive, totally human. Of course, there is the flip side: realizing that there is no way you could hurt someone the way they hurt you, because they don't give a damn about you and never did._

_But that's a totally different story._


	6. Into The Black

Korsak was crouched in front of Frankie Rizzoli, his hands on the younger man's shoulders, when Dr. Isles rushed back in the door to the priest's apartment. Frankie had arrived perhaps ten minutes earlier, and though he had taken the news more calmly than his sister, he was clearly shaken to the core by the revelation, and he'd sworn vehemently that the priest had never laid a hand on him.

"Is Jane here?" Vince glanced up in surprise; the doc's pale face and the unmistakeable note of distress in her voice sent a sudden burst of acid to flood his stomach.

"She's supposed to be with you, Doc," he said, getting to his feet and turning to her, trying not to sound accusatory. "Didn't she make it to the Robber?" He checked his watch: six thirty. Scenarios zipped through his mind on fast-forward: car wreck, interrupting a crime in progress, Jane spilling the beans to Angela and giving her mother a heart attack.

"She...she did, but -" The doctor's mouth worked silently, and her eyes were shimmering with tears as they cut guiltily to Frankie, who was eying her with a wary expression. "Vince, we – I -"

_Aw, shit. _Of all the times for another goddamned catfight. "What happened?" he asked, unable to keep the growl from his voice.

She glanced again at Frankie, looking almost fearful.

_Shit._ "In here," he said, jerking his head toward the bedroom and striding toward it. "Frankie, keep checking those pictures. We need names. Frost, take a break," he said curtly to the younger detective. "Stay with Frankie."

"Hang on, I think I've got something." The detective was beside the bed, his hands on the wooden corner post, unscrewing the top and lifting it off. "Bingo," he breathed. "It's hollow." He reached inside with gloved hands, drawing out a small metallic object. "USB flash drive. Sixty-four gigs, and this isn't something you get off the shelf at Best Buy." He held it up, turning it this way and that. "It's heavy duty. Stainless steel case, looks like it's shielded to keep the data from being corrupted by magnetic sources. And this..." He pulled out another item that looked similar to the first, "is a USB wireless card."

Despite her distress, the doctor was obviously intrigued, approaching the bedpost and peering inside. "This is custom work," she announced. "It's been done post-manufacturing, and it would require a wood lathe and someone with quite a bit of skill to create such a seamless fit."

"There was an internet connection at the desk, wasn't there?" Korsak asked.

Frost nodded. "High speed DSL, from the looks of it," he agreed, "but it was probably provided by the Catholic church, which meant that their IT department could monitor all web traffic, e-mails, downloads, pretty much everything."

"So he got this so he could look at kiddie porn in privacy." Korsak felt his gut tighten in anger.

"Maybe." Frost didn't look convinced. "This thing is as strongly constructed as the flash drive. I'll have a look at them both when we get them back to HQ."

"Frost." Dr. Isles had moved to the bedpost on the opposite side of the bed and unscrewed the cap, peering inside. "There's more in here."

Frost immediately moved around the bed and reached into the compartment. "Another USB," he murmured as he withdrew it, "but this one looks like a standard commercial model. Only eight gigs of storage."

"Bag 'em and tag 'em," Korsak ordered, his eyes finishing the order: _And close the door on your way out._

Frost nodded and complied, leaving Korsak and Dr. Isles alone in the room. She sat on the edge of the mattress, her hands folded in her lap and her eyes on the floor, tears close again, threatening to spill from her eyes. "Vince, I did something awful tonight."

Considering that calling a reddish-brown stain blood until confirmation was obtained through testing was among her cardinal sins, Vince wasn't sure where her 'awful' would fall on a standard scale. "Tell me."

She did.

"Jesus _Christ_!" he roared, oblivious to the way she flinched and hunched even deeper into herself. "What the _hell_ were you thinking?" The one person he'd been counting on to bring Rizzoli back under control had dumped napalm on the fire instead.

"I _wasn't_ thinking." The tears were falling freely now, smearing the usually immaculate makeup. "I _couldn't_ think. The hospital called. My father had a stroke and is in a coma that he's not expected to come out of, and then Jane -"

"Your _father_?" Korsak demanded incredulously. "You listen to me, Doc, because I'm only gonna say this once, and then I'm gonna mind my own goddamn business. I like you, I really do, but for someone who is supposed to be a genius, you've been awfully dumb lately. You think because he watched you all those years, because he shot Flynn in that warehouse, that means he loves you?

"Patrick Doyle doesn't know how to love. He _owns_. Things, people, they're all the same, and he makes sure that people know that he looks after what he owns, because that's how he stays in control. He didn't even bother coming to see you until his son died, and then he tried to make you an accessory to murder. He kidnapped you when he wanted to talk to you, and when he got shot, he barged in and let one of his thugs hold you at gunpoint to patch him up. He killed Flynn, yes, but he shot a Federal agent to save his own skin, and he would have shot Jane, or Frost to keep from getting caught, as well. That sound like Ward Cleaver to you?"

"Agent Dean should never have been there!" Maura cried out. "Jane should never have told him! I trusted her -"

"Trusted her to keep breaking the law for you?" Maura cringed, but Korsak was done holding back. "She put her career on the line to keep your secret, and she never thought twice about it. Let's say Dean didn't show up. What then? Doyle shoots our only suspect and walks away, and Jane gets to cover up what happened? She'd have tried to do it – for you – and it would have been the end of her as a cop. It damn near was anyway. Is that what you wanted?" He saw her eyes widen in horror as she really let herself think about the possibilities for the first time.

"No," Maura sobbed, "but Vince, he's the only one who knows who my mother is, how I can find her!"

"Your mother is still in rehab," Korsak countered, his tone lower but still measured, deliberate. "She knocked you out of the way of a car that was meant to kill you. _That's_ love. And if you don't think that the best damn squad of detectives in Boston can find a woman using her first name, your date of birth and hospital records for that period, you're not giving us much credit."

Her head came up, surprise. "Vince, after all this, I can't ask you to -"

"You didn't ask." His voice was gentler now. "We'll do it, because that's what family does, and that's love, too. We'll find this Hope, I guarantee it, but you have _got_ to pull your head out of your ass before you talk to Jane again. I helped put her back together after Hoyt, but what's going on between you is tearing her up in places that Hoyt never got near, and this..." He trailed off, not even wanting to think about what these new revelations were doing to Jane, how she might react. "Right now, she's a time bomb looking for someone to go off on, and I don't have any idea how to find her or defuse her."

"She's not answering her phone." Maura held her own phone, looking at it despairingly, as though willing it to ring. "She'll be looking for Tommy. I can -"

"You need to get back to the morgue and find out what you can from that body," he said, stopping her as she rose and started for the door. He caught her shoulders, turning her until he could look into her eyes. "Cavanaugh's orders. Tommy's gonna be a suspect on this until we can ID the real killer, so we need to do it fast."

She swallowed hard, nodded, then threw her arms around him. "Find her, Vince," she whispered. "Please."

He nodded, returning the hug awkwardly, breaking free as the phone rang, nodding toward Maura to go.

"Do I want to know?" Frost asked when he emerged from the bedroom. Dr. Isles was gone, and Frankie was on his feet, pacing back and forth with his phone in his hand.

"Jane's not pickin' up! Neither is Tommy!" he announced agitatedly. "What the hell happened? What did she say to her? Did she think she wasn't already blaming herself?"

"Enough." Korsak said firmly, quickly laying out what needed to be done. "Frost, get everything back to Evidence, put a BOLO out on Jane's car, with instructions to contact me if it's spotted. Alert the area pawn shops to be on the lookout for that laptop and see what you can find on those flasher things. Frankie, Cavanaugh says there's going to be a report breaking on the late news, so you need to go and give your mother the heads-up before it runs."

"Great." Frankie looked ill at the prospect, but shoved his phone in his pocket. "You guys gotta find her. I know her. She's blamin' herself, and she's gonna do something crazy. When one of the Carter twins pushed Tommy out of a tree and broke his arm, I thought she was gonna kill the kid, and that was after Tommy'd spilled a Coke all over her baseball cards." He sagged, his hands on his knees. "Why didn't he tell us?" he muttered miserably. "We'd have made the bastard stop."

"Abusers are skilled at manipulating their targets," Frost said, putting a hand on the officer's shoulder. "He was a kid. He never stood a chance."

Frankie nodded and straightened, his brown eyes going to the bloody area on the carpet. "He got off easy," he growled, spinning and striding from the room.

"No argument there," Frost murmured, his expression grim. "You think anybody else knew?"

"In the church, you mean?" Korsak shrugged. "I'm betting the old priest didn't, but higher up? Their track record ain't exactly golden."

"You think she'll go after one of them?"

"Shit, I hope not." As satisfying as the notion might be, it would end her career as quickly as letting Doyle walk away from shooting Flynn would have. "Finish up here, I'm gonna hit the streets, see what I can find."

* * *

Make. It. Right.

The words pounded incessantly in time with her heartbeat as she maneuvered the Crown Vic through traffic. She _couldn't_ make it right, couldn't undo what had been done to her baby brother, what she had let happen.

"_So, you're telling me that while you have spent the last several years criticizing your brother mercilessly for his drinking and self-destructive behaviors, he has been struggling with untreated post-traumatic stress as the result of being sexually abused by a priest who was trusted by your family, most likely at least in part during visits that you dropped him off for?"_

It was true. Every fucking word. Maura Isles couldn't lie, and the look on her face as she'd spoken: the anger, the disgust, made it all too clear just how abysmally Jane had failed her family.

Some hero. Baby brother is getting raped by a priest, and she was sitting in the bleachers scoping out the bastard's ass, then leaving Tommy there alone.

She pulled to the curb, slammed into park until the urge to puke had passed, then merged back into traffic again. All the signs had been there: the change in personality, the reluctance to go to church, refusing to play baseball, the aggression, the drinking. And instead of putting them together, she'd called him a screwup, time and again. A raw sob tore at her chest, but her eyes were dry. She was done crying, and she was going to do her job: as a sister and as an officer of the law. First she'd find Tommy, get him someplace safe, and then she was going to find the bastards who let a baby-raping priest keep targeting new victims, year after year. _Somebody_ fucking knew, and if they wanted to yank her badge for digging, they were welcome to it.

Her eyes combed the crowds that milled on the sidewalks, but she wasn't looking for Tommy. Thirty-two years as his sister, and she had no idea where he might go, how to find him, but she knew who could. She spotted the familiar toboggan cap and jacket, pulled over and got out.

"Vanilla!" Rondo's face lit up when he recognized her. "You are lookin' fine -" His usual flirtatious patter cut of when he got a closer look. "What's up?" His eyes shifted briefly behind her, looking for a tail.

She cut right to the chase. "You know my brother Tommy?"

He nodded immediately. "Hell, yeah. What's goin' on, Vanilla? Something happen to him? You look like shit."

"I need you to find him." She held out two fifties: more than she'd ever offered him as a CI. "When you do, don't approach him. Just call me and tell me where he is, then keep eyes on him until I get there."

He nodded slowly, his eyes never leaving her face as he folded her hand back around the bills. "Rondo's on the case, Vanilla. Don't you worry."

Jane nodded, her throat suddenly far too tight. "Find him, Rondo," she managed. "Please."

She returned to her car, retrieved the phone from where she had pitched it into the back seat after turning it off. She turned it back on. Twenty-one calls: ten from Maura, six from Frankie, two each from Korsak and Frost and one from her mother. She didn't return any, didn't check the messages. She couldn't deal with any of them right now, especially not her mother. How the hell was she going to tell her?

_Hey, Ma? That priest that you thought walked on water? He spent four years molesting Tommy, and I never noticed. You know how you were always on me to take it easy on him, give him a chance? You were right._

She couldn't go home, couldn't go talk to Maura...maybe not ever again. The doctor had made her opinion of Jane's failure to protect her brother very, very clear. Maura was the best, kindest, most honest person that Jane knew, and she'd looked at Jane like she was a piece of shit.

Make. It. Right.

A cop made it right by arresting the perp, but Daniel Murtaugh was dead, and Jane didn't need to be a psychic to know that the hierarchy of the Boston Archdiocese would close up ranks to protect any evidence of knowledge higher up. A big sister made it right by making whoever was hurting her little brother stop, but she hadn't done that, and now it was too late. A friend made it right by taking care of her friends, but first she'd betrayed Maura's trust by telling Dean about Paddy Doyle, then she'd shot him, nearly killed him.

It was all fucked up, and she didn't know how to fix it.

She had to fix _something_.

She didn't remember consciously deciding to go to the Combat Zone, but when she crossed the line into the world of brilliant neon and impenetrable shadow, a sense of steely, calm purpose infused her. Eight square blocks of hell on earth, where routine patrols seldom lingered. Drugs, guns, sex: if you wanted it, and knew who to talk to, you could find it here.

Eyes turned to follow her, the Crown Vic all but screaming 'Cop!", but the players kept playing, the hookers kept displaying their wares to the passers by. A few moved deeper into the shadows to continue their business, and she absently wondered how long it would be before someone took a shot at her. She didn't care, didn't look at the hookers and the drug deals and the porn shops, because she knew now where she was going.

The Black Light district was in the heart of the Combat Zone, and it was here that the kids were bought and sold. Vice would come through every couple of weeks for a bust, but before the week was out, the pimps would be out on bail and most of the kids would have run away from whatever foster home or detention center they'd been put in and be right back doing the only thing they thought they were worth doing. She'd hated this place in Vice, and she hated it now, her eyes seeing Tommy's forced smile on the face of every boy.

Then she felt her breath stop. A well-dressed, middle aged man was walking toward a Lexus, his arm around the slender shoulders of a boy who couldn't be more than twelve. The man was leaning in, saying something to the boy, who offered a mechanical smile, his blue eyes dull, resigned.

A thin haze of red descended over Jane's vision. Without even bothering to pull over, she slammed it into park and leaped out of the car, acutely aware of the weight of the gun at her hip.


	7. Interferance

_Author's Note: My thanks to those of you who have read this story & placed it on your favorite/follow lists, with special thanks to those of you who have taken the time to share your thoughts and reactions!_

_Was watching 4x05 as I was finishing this up, and dear lord, I hate it when people who are undoubtedly getting paid ridiculous amounts of money to write scripts can't bother to write plausibly. Bad enough in the last episode, with the Chief Medical Examiner being tossed into general population (never happen) and the absolute WTF moment with Angela and the video (I'm considering a one-shot to explain it semi-plausibly, because they sure as hell didn't). But seriously? Does anyone really think that Maura would be allowed within a mile of any case involving Paddy Doyle? And what the hell was he doing that close to the basement after enough time had passed for a major gas explosion?_

_And yes, the chipper, joking finale after we've put Maura's father on death row for burning Cavanaugh's wife and son to death. God forbid we actually let the cast do what they're capable of. I do enjoy the humor, but they fall back on it way too much._

_OK, end of rant, on with the show._

* * *

"Sir?"

"Yes?"

"DIOS just sent up an alert for Boston."

"What is it?"

"Unidentified murder victim, but algorithms indicate better than 95% probability that it is Daniel Murtaugh."

"The priest?"

"Yes, sir."

"All right. Assemble a team. I'll give Washington the heads-up."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

Maura stepped away from the autopsy table, feeling the tension radiating through her trapezius muscles down her neck and across her shoulders. The autopsy had taken hours of painstaking work; the bruises, broken bones, contusions and lacerations had to be examined, photographed, x-rayed, fluoroscoped. Urine, blood, stomach contents and vitreous fluid collected for drug and toxin analysis. Skin, fingernails, mouth and genitalia searched for trace evidence that the perpetrator might have left behind. Each finding meticulously documented, the chain of evidence maintained to preserve its admissibility in a court of law. In many ways, this autopsy was no different from the hundreds of others she had done in her career; the routine that she followed was one that she had developed years earlier and followed on every case. She could not recall another autopsy where her attention had been so fragmented, however, and she clung to the stability of the established protocol with a grim desperation, well aware that Tommy's freedom could hinge upon the validity of her findings.

She'd been terrified that she would find something that would implicate him, equally terrified that if she stepped aside for another ME, they might miss something that could exculpate him. She'd forced herself to focus, pushing aside worries of where Jane could be, how she could even begin to atone for what she had said, what she would do if atonement was not possible. When she was finished, she felt reasonably confident that the evidence did not indicate Tommy as a likely suspect, but while initially the injuries had pointed to a crime of passion and extreme rage, she was no longer quite as sure.

"Susie, can you close?" The question was apologetic. Closing up after an autopsy was not part of the job description of a Senior Criminalist. While morgue technicians could perform the task, Maura usually saw to it herself as the final step of her routine: a solemn ritual of respect, reversing the invasion that she had made of the victim's most private places and making them fit to be viewed by their loved ones. She felt no such sense of obligation to this particular victim, however, and the need to find out where Jane was provided the final push.

It was well after midnight, however, and while she had needed to call Susie back in to assist in collection and processing of specimens from the victim, she had not summoned any of the other other staff. The press would be hungry for details on this murder, willing to resort to bribes, deceit and nearly any other means to secure an exclusive, heedless of the possibility that publication of their scoop could compromise the investigation. Not that Maura didn't trust her staff; most had been thoroughly vetted and knew the consequences of unauthorized releases of information, but even the most circumspect among them had spouses, lovers, families that they trusted, that they talked to as a way to deal with the grisly details of their daily work. Those people were frequently less circumspect; what her people didn't know, they couldn't reveal, inadvertently or otherwise.

"Of course, Dr. Isles," Susie said at once, showing no hint of displeasure at the request. She was a consummate professional, maneuvering deftly through the minefields of the last few weeks, stepping up to become the primary liaison between homicide and the morgue without ever indicating that she held any opinion regarding the conflict that had made it necessary.

Leaving Susie to her task, Maura headed for the elevators. She needed to speak with Korsak and Frost anyway, to go over her preliminary autopsy findings and correlate with what they had discovered at the scene, because what she had found could very well change the direction of the investigation.

She was brought up short in the doorway by the raised voices coming from Lieutenant Cavanaugh's closed office. "Why didn't you tell me she was back?"

Korsak glanced at her wearily. "We just got back ourselves. Went over that place with a fine-toothed comb, found even more pictures the bastard had hidden. Found the team rosters, too, started matching up names and faces. Gotta start contacting the known victims tomorrow, but first, we gotta get all this shit -" he waved at the boxes stacked on the desks, "-logged into Evidence." Frost was already at his desk, filling out forms, but his eyes kept cutting to Cavanaugh's office.

"What happened?" she asked in a hushed voice.

"No idea," Vince replied grimly. "They were in there when we got back, twenty minutes ago."

"Yeah, whatever the hell you said to her sure did the trick," Frankie spoke up bitterly from where he sat beside Frost, assisting with the paperwork.

"Enough, Frankie," Korsak said, shaking his head, and the younger man scowled and went back to work. They were all exhausted and worried, running on coffee and adrenaline. Tempers were always short at times like this, but his words had been true, and Maura ducked her head, swallowing back the tears. Her best friend had come to her for help, teetering on a ledge, and Maura had all but shoved her over.

Cavanaugh's door flew open abruptly, the heated voices growing suddenly louder. "I mean it, Rizzoli! You are not to go near the man!"

"So he just walks?" Jane stalked into the bullpen. "I caught him picking up a twelve year old kid in the Black Light!"

"As part of his church outreach, according to him!" Cavanaugh clearly wasn't buying it any more than Jane did. "The kid backed him up. And you damn near broke his nose slamming him over the hood of your car and almost dislocated his shoulder cuffing him! He's not going to press charges or file a complaint -"

"Don't do me any favors!" Jane snarled. Her hair had lost any semblance of order, falling in a mass of tangled curls, and her face was taut with anger...until she caught sight of Maura standing in the doorway. She spun away, but not before the doctor saw the pain and guilt wash across her features. The whisper of spiteful satisfaction that had accompanied other such moments in the past three weeks was nowhere to be found now; there was only cringing horror and guilt at the memory of what she'd said.

"Oh, I'm done doing you favors, Rizzoli," the lieutenant shot back. "First thing tomorrow, you're back on the Kapersky homicide."

"What?" Jane twisted back to face him, disbelief and anger supplanting pain and guilt. "Why? That bust didn't have anything to do with the Murtaugh homicide!"

"The hell it didn't!" Cavanaugh replied. "Go home, get some rest and cool off, because if you pull another stunt like you did tonight, I'll suspend your ass, charges or no charges!"

"But -"

"No buts!" The lieutenant's temper flared, his face reddening. "You're off the case, Rizzoli!"

"Actually, you're all off the case."

Maura jumped in surprise at the voice that came from right behind her. She hadn't heard anyone approach, but when she turned, three men were already brushing past her into the bullpen.

"Rod Fletcher, Supervisory Deputy United States Marshal," the one in the lead announced, withdrawing a badge from his pocket and displaying it as he spoke. He was a black man, in his late forties and fit, moving and speaking with the easy confidence of one accustomed to controlling whatever situation he found himself in. "My colleagues, Deputy Marshals Charles Haskell and Robert Drake." His introductions were met with flat stares from all sides. Unaffected, he went on. "The murder of Daniel Murtaugh is now under federal jurisdiction. I want all evidence and any notes made to date in your investigation pulled together and turned over immediately. Everything, including all copies."

"Like hell!" Jane glared defiantly at Fletcher. "What was he...a federal witness? He got a free pass for raping kids because he knew some important names, and now it all gets swept back under the rug?"

"I'm not at liberty to disclose any details," the marshal replied without a hint of apology in his voice. He glanced at Cavanaugh. "Nor am I required to. You are bound by law to release all evidence pertinent to the investigation and to cease all investigative actions of your own."

It was a speech designed to intimidate, but Sean Cavanaugh did not intimidate easily. "Not until I confirm your credentials," he said, waving off the card that Fletcher offered. "Keep it. I know how to use the directory."

It was a not so subtle jab, but Fletcher ignored it, waiting placidly as Cavanaugh returned to his office and closed the door. The one introduced as Charles Haskell smirked openly at the detectives.

"You might as well start getting shit together," he told them.

"We'll wait," Korsak said, leaning back quite deliberately in his chair. Haskell turned to regard him with a flat stare. He was a big man: tall and broad shouldered, with close-cropped blonde hair and an air of tightly coiled tension around him that contrasted sharply with Fletcher's calm.

"You don't want to fuck with us, old man," he rumbled. His eyes were odd: a startlingly light shade of green that combined with his barely restrained energy to give him a predatory aspect that made Maura uneasy.

"Enough, Haskell," the third of the group – Drake – spoke up, but Jane had already taken up the gauntlet.

"Yeah, Korsak," she said, eying Haskell with open disdain. "No telling where he's been sticking his dick. Assuming he can even get it up." Jane had always had a talent for finding the sensitive spots; it had borne fruit on more than one interrogation, and it hit home now. Haskell flushed an ugly shade of red and took a step toward Jane, who stood her ground, watching him fearlessly.

"Enough." It was Fletcher who spoke now, and the calm authority in his voice was touched with steel. Haskell glanced briefly at the man who was evidently his superior and controlled himself, turning away from Jane. Maura let out a silent sigh of relief, but Jane wasn't done yet.

"You know, if you neuter them, you can avoid a lot of these problems," she informed Fletcher in a conversational tone. The marshal made no response, but his unruffled mien suggested that he was confident that they would be getting what they had come for, so he could afford to ignore the efforts to provoke.

Maura caught Barry's eye. The detective mouthed a single word at her:

_Go._

She didn't need to ask what he meant. The collection of evidence would undoubtedly include the body, all evidence collected from it and her notes from the autopsy. Solving the case would be a secondary consideration to whatever investigation Murtaugh had been involved in, and a swift conviction might be considered more important than a correct one. With his prison record, Tommy would make a perfect scapegoat, and without the body or the autopsy findings, Maura would have nothing to support the tentative conclusions that she had reached.

She edged away from the door and walked as calmly as she could to the stairs, then raced down them to the morgue.

"Susie, I need you to collect all evidence from this case and box it up. It's become a federal investigation."

The senior criminalist looked up in surprise, but obeyed, tying off the final stitches with swift but neat efficiency.

"I'll get the body ready for transport," Maura told her. "You pull together everything else." Susie nodded and left Maura alone with Murtaugh's body. She pulled her cell phone from her pocket, switched on the camera. The marshals would be taking all the autopsy photos, but if she could just get a few clear images of the throat -

A hand closed around her wrist in a brutal grip, grinding bones together until her fingers flew open, the phone dropping to the tile floor.

"What the hell do you think you're doing?" Haskell growled, green eyes glowering at her.

"Let me go!" she cried out. She was angry, yes, and shocked at the manhandling, but this man frightened her, too. She hadn't heard him following, but he had to have been close behind her. She fought to keep the fear from her face, her voice, knowing that it would please him, perhaps even goad him to greater cruelty.

Instead of releasing her, he tightened his grip until tears sprang unbidden to her eyes, watching them trickle down her cheeks with obvious satisfaction. "Do you know the penalties for interfering in a federal investigation, doctor?" he asked softly, the crushing circle of his hand closing still tighter, until she was sure that the carpal bones would shatter under the pressure.

"Get your fucking hands off her!" Jane exploded across the room, slamming into Haskell with enough force to make him release his hold on Maura and send him stumbling back several steps into an empty autopsy table. His expression turned murderous; Jane looked scarcely less enraged.

"Bring it, big guy," Jane challenged him in a low voice, positioning herself between Haskell and Maura, her body tensed to respond. Haskell had six inches and close to a hundred pounds on the detective; Jane had taken down even larger suspects, but this was no ordinary criminal. Everything about him suggested an easy familiarity with violence and a willingness to use it.

"Jane, I'm fine," Maura said. She wanted to reach out and touch her arm, but didn't dare distract her, because Haskell was watching Jane with the hungry look of a tiger, just waiting for an opening to strike. His pupils were pinpoints: tiny dots of black in a sea of green, and Maura felt her fear jump another notch at that realization. "Jane -"

"Rizzoli!"

"Haskell!"

Cavanaugh and Fletcher barked their reprimands at nearly the same moment. Haskell's eyes shifted toward his commander, but Jane's gaze never wavered until Haskell stepped away.

"Good boy," she congratulated him mockingly. "Sit. Stay."

The hungry, predator's eyes pinned the detective. "Another time," he promised ominously.

"Any time," Jane shot back without hesitating, lifting her chin defiantly.

"Rizzoli, enough!" Cavanaugh snapped irritably. "They're legit. The investigation is theirs." He looked none too happy with the statement.

"And that gives them the right to assault the Chief Medical Examiner?" Jane inquired heatedly, turning back to Maura, who obligingly lifted her arm to display the bruises that were already visible on her wrist.

"She was using her phone to take pictures of the body," Haskell said in response to Fletcher's lifted eyebrows.

The senior agent nodded, seeming neither surprised nor angered. "We'll have to confiscate the phone," was all that he said. Maura nodded her acceptance. She'd taken a chance and gotten caught; technically, Fletcher could probably have charged her.

"It's broken anyway," she said quietly, hoping to settle the anger sparking in Jane's eyes before it could flare into another confrontation. She bent to retrieve the phone, tilting it to display the shattered screen before setting it aside.

"Really?" One dark eyebrow arched in feigned surprise. "Gee, I wonder how that happened. Gestapo tactics are usually so gentle."

"Just get the evidence together," Fletcher said, still as calm as if he were ordering a martini. "Haskell, go wait upstairs with Drake." Haskell departed, leaving Fletcher to settle himself in a corner of the morgue, quite plainly intending to ensure that no further unauthorized activities took place.

"Doc, I need to borrow your office." Cavanaugh was informing her, not asking. "Rizzoli, with me."

Jane sighed, but followed the lieutenant into Maura's office, closing the door behind her.

"I'm all right," Maura told Susie, who had watched the entire scene unfold in stunned silence. "Just finish packaging the evidence for transport, please." She glanced at Fletcher, trying not to listen to the rise and fall of voices from behind her closed door. "How will you transport the victim?"

"We brought a van and gurney," the marshal replied politely. "We'll assist with transferring the body when we're ready to go."

"Thank you," Maura replied, equally polite. She couldn't decide what unsettled her more: Haskell's barely-contained violence or his superior's unshakeable calm. Fletcher was clearly a man accustomed to having his orders obeyed, and the ease with which he'd brought Haskell to heel suggested that he could employ more than words to ensure obedience. Given what she suspected about Haskell, it was likely that Rod Fletcher was even more dangerous than his subordinate.

She turned her attention to preparing the body for transport: replacing the bags that the crime scene technicians had placed over the hands, pulling out a clean body bag, using the time to take one more look at the body.

"What were your findings, Doctor?" Fletcher's question sounded idle enough, but when she looked over at him, the interest in his eyes was a bit more than casual.

"My findings are in my notes, which will be included with the other evidence," she informed him crisply.

"Any conclusions? Speculations?"

"I am a scientist, Deputy," she replied. "I had only just completed the initial autopsy. Speculation at this point would be premature and unprofessional." No hives. She hadn't actually lied, after all. She simply had neglected to mention that, over the past three years, she had learned to indulge in a bit of speculation, as long as she kept firmly in mind that it was only speculation. She didn't include such speculations in her case notes, and there would be nothing but facts in the notes that were surrendered to the marshals; she wondered if they had anyone competent to interpret the significance of the findings she had recorded, or if they would even try. Fletcher seemed to accept her statement, going silent once more and leaving her to her work.

She looked up as the door to her office opened and Lieutenant Cavanaugh emerged. He met her eyes for a moment, and she flushed guiltily, wondering if Korsak or Jane had told him what she'd said, but he just gave her a weary nod and headed back upstairs. She waited a bit longer, but there was really nothing more to be done with the body until it was placed in the body bag and transferred to the gurney, and when Jane still hadn't appeared after two minutes, she gathered her courage and went in.

Jane was leaning on the back of the sofa, head down, the picture of weary dejection.

"Hey," Maura said quietly.

Jane lifted her head. "Hey," she echoed, her eyes dropping briefly to Maura's wrist before she looked away. "You all right?"

Maura felt the tightness returning to her chest and throat. "I'm fine," she managed to say, remembering something that Jane had said several months ago when Maura had wondered aloud how she could be so hard on Tommy but still almost come to blows when one of the detectives in Narcotics had made a snide remark about her "loser" of a brother.

"_He's __**my**__ brother. I can kick his ass, but nobody else had better try."_

"Just some bruising," she added, opening and closing her hand to prove its functionality. "Thank you."

Jane nodded, still not looking directly at the doctor, but Maura could see her jaw clenched in anger. Anger at her? At Haskell? Both? Neither? "Jane, I -"

"Don't." Maura's heart sank, but when Jane turned to face her, the anger had faded. She looked weary, confused, sad and more than a little fearful, with a pronounced darkening of the nasojugal folds that meant she hadn't been getting enough sleep. "I don't -" She broke off, dropping her eyes. "I don't know why every time we try to talk we -" She shook her head slowly, her left thumb rubbing over her right palm. "I just don't want to do it any more," she said in a low voice. "I just -" She lifted her head just enough to meet Maura's eyes, her expression plaintive as she held out her arms. "Please?"

There was no thought, no hesitation. Clearly, Jane thought that her plea might be ignored, rebuffed, and Maura's heart broke a little at the realization. She stepped forward to embrace the detective, feeling Jane's arms go around her with the strength of one clinging to a lifeline in a storm.

"Shhh. I'm here." She stroked the tangled hair, smoothed the t-shirt over Jane's back, feeling the tension thrumming through the lanky frame, the startling prominence of the lines of the scapula and ribs. "I'm here," she repeated softly. She needed to apologize for all she had said and done, needed to tell Jane about the findings that pointed away from Tommy as a suspect, needed to warn her about how dangerous Haskell likely was, but there would be time for that later. Right now, this was what Jane needed...and she needed it, too. She'd missed the easy closeness between them even more than she had allowed herself to dwell upon.

Jane had lowered her head, resting her forehead against Maura's shoulder, and her embrace slowly lost some of its desperate strength, but neither of them moved until Jane's phone chirped a rising series of notes that Maura knew as well as she knew the tones on her own phone: an incoming text message.

Jane stepped away with an apologetic look, fishing her phone from her pocket. Her expression shifted in an instant to a mix of relief and dread. "It's Rondo. He's found Tommy."

* * *

"Did you get the name I sent?"

"Jane Clementine Rizzoli, age 38, detective in the Homicide Division of the Boston Police Department?"

"That's her."

"I've pulled together a file. DIOS is running an analysis now, should have results in a minute. She's got an interesting history."

"I can imagine. She tried to take on Haskell."

"Indeed? And what did he do to provoke her?"

"He...behaved inappropriately. I'd recommend not utilizing him on missions requiring contact with non-target individuals. Or adjusting his dosage. Possibly both. He's unstable."

"But good at what he does. I'll take your recommendation under consideration. And according to DIOS, your detective has better than ninety-nine percent probability that she will pursue an investigation, regardless of consequences to herself."

"She used excessive force on an arrest earlier this evening. We can likely get her suspended for a few weeks."

"Available data on her indicates that a more permanent solution will be required. Stand by for further instruction."

"Yes, sir."


	8. Reckless

_Author's Note: Thanks as always to those who have read/faved/followed this story, with special thanks to those of you who took the time to share your thoughts & reactions in your reviews!_

* * *

Tommy hadn't fallen off the wagon: he'd taken a flying leap over the side. The bar that Rondo had found him at would have to be upgraded to qualify as a dive; they were apparently willing to serve booze as long as a customer could get to their wallet...and then finish emptying the wallet after said customer got too drunk to do anything about it. By the time Frankie, Jane and Maura had gotten there, Tommy was unconscious with his face in a puddle of vomit on the table and his wallet open and empty on the seat beside him. Faced with two very angry police officers, the bartender had 'found' Tommy's credit cards, but the cash was long gone, and as badly as Jane wanted to roust the place, there were more important considerations at the moment.

They'd gotten him into the back of Jane's car, Frankie with him and Maura following in her Prius. Before they'd covered half the distance to her apartment, there had been the sound of Tommy retching, a fluid gurgling and an "Aw, shit!" from Frankie, followed by the unmistakable sound of a very expensive upholstery detailing in the immediate future.

She didn't give a damn.

The only intelligible words out of Tommy the whole drive were a series of tearful "I'm sorrys", interspersed with choked sobs so broken sounding that Jane wanted to pound on the steering wheel and scream out her own grief and rage.

She met Frankie's eyes in the rearview mirror, looking as haunted as she felt. "Christ, Janie, you don't think he -"

"No." She cut him off before he could finish. Never mind that Tommy didn't have the brutality to pulverize another human being; he didn't have it in him to cover up the crime once committed. No way he could have looked her in the eye this afternoon if he'd killed Murtaugh the night before. No way he could have faked his response to the death.

But if anyone else heard him talking like that... Her eyes shifted in the mirror to the lights of Maura's car as they parked in front of her apartment. She didn't think that Maura would say anything, but what if she were asked point-blank if she knew of anything that might implicate him as a suspect? No way could she put the woman who couldn't lie into a position where Tommy's freedom might depend on her doing just that.

"Tommy." She put the Crown Vic into park, killed the engine and turned around, leaning over the front seat and catching Tommy's face in her hands. "I need you to be quiet. No more talking until I say so, all right? Can you do that, little brother? Please?"

His eyes swiveled unsteadily in their sockets before focusing hazily on her. He stared at her blankly for a moment, then his head rocked back and forth like a bobblehead, and he gave her a conspiratorial smile, raising a finger to his lips and saying, "Like a secret, ri'? I'm good at keepin' secrets, Jane."

Her nails dug into the upholstery, and for a moment, she thought that she might add her own stomach contents to the mess in the back seat, though there wouldn't be much left after the upchucking in the rectory. "No more secrets, Tommy. I promise. Let's get you upstairs." If Maura heard something, she'd deal with it later; she couldn't ask him to add to the silence of twenty years.

They got him out of the car: Jane under one arm, Frankie under the other, and she breathed a silent sigh of relief as the way he sagged between them made it clear that he'd passed out again.

"What can I do?" Maura asked as she got out of her car. It was on the tip of Jane's tongue to ask her to just leave, but she couldn't do it, couldn't push her away when they'd made only the barest start of healing the breach between them. She'd just have to hope that Tommy stayed out.

"Get the door?" she grunted, and Maura hurried ahead, pulling out her own keys. No matter how acrimonious things had gotten between them, neither had ever asked the other for the house keys they had exchanged years ago. Faith or an unwillingness to make that final act of severance Jane didn't know, but she was glad that she didn't have to dig for her own pocketed set.

She heard her mother's raised voice in the first floor foyer, had just enough time to wonder who in the hell she was yelling at, with all three of her offspring downstairs, when her father's shouting joined the din.

"Jesus," she groaned, exchanging an exasperated glance with Frankie and wondering if it was possible for this day to get any worse.

"Should I go?" Maura asked uncertainly. Jane glanced at her; the doctor's expression was apprehensive, but the hazel eyes watched Jane with a familiar empathy. She knew how Jane felt about putting her family's dysfunctions on display. Jane wondered if she'd heard about Frank's annulment request.

"Probably a good idea," she replied apologetically. "I'll come over after I get things settled here, all right?" If she accomplished nothing else this fucked-up day, she wanted to finish setting things right between them...or at least finish starting the process.

The shy but relieved smile on Maura's face indicated that she felt the same way. "I'd like that," she said. "Should I order Thai? Or pizza?"

Jane felt her stomach do a slow roll. "Not sure," she replied, trying to decide if it was hunger or residual nausea; it was 2 AM, and she had eaten nothing since she'd emptied her stomach into Murtaugh's toilet. "Let's figure that out after I get there, okay?"

"All right." Maura nodded, watching her worriedly. "Maybe you should sleep first?"

She shook her head. "Not gonna happen." Not with her parents arguing in her apartment. Not with her brother a potential suspect in the brutal murder of a pedophile priest. Not with her thoughts chasing themselves in circles in her mind and her frustrations with Fletcher and his fucking attack dog stealing their case still at a high simmer. Maybe – just maybe – if she got to the point that she could open up to Maura and let it all tumble out, she might be able to catch a few hours of rest before the next day's insanity kicked in. Maybe. "I'll be there," she promised – herself, as much as Maura.

Maura nodded, left, and Jane and Frankie turned their energies to hauling their unconscious brother up the stairs.

"Is the rest of your family moving in, Rizzoli?" the super inquired sarcastically, poking his head from his apartment as they passed.

"No, Mr. Douglas," she replied, forcing civility into her tone. Most of the time, the bastard was happy enough to have a police officer in residence. "Just a bit of a crisis tonight, that's all."

His eyes took in Tommy's slumped form, puke down his front and reeking of booze. "Yeah, I can see that. Just tell them to keep it down. People gotta be at work in the morning!"

"This from a man who doesn't answer calls until the crack of noon?" she muttered as his door slammed.

"Probably drowning out his porn," Frankie offered sourly, his eyes shifting to Jane's door. "What the hell is he doing here?"

She shrugged as best she could under the weight of her brother who, contrary to the song, was currently heavy as hell. "Maybe he remembered he has a family?" she suggested, not even believing it herself.

The sniping ceased as they staggered through the door. "Oh, my God!" Angela burst into tears as soon as she saw him. "What happened to him?"

"He's drunk," Frank announced with disgust, forgetting the beer-soaked afternoons watching football, baseball, hockey or basketball that had been a regular weekend feature of their childhoods. Forgetting that _he_ had given Tommy his first taste of beer at the age of nine (he'd done the same for Frankie...but not Jane. Girls weren't supposed to drink beer, you see). A great man for forgetting, was Frank Rizzoli, Senior. "I thought he was on the wagon!"

"After what he's been through?" Angela demanded furiously. "After what that monster did to him?"

"That was twenty years ago!" Frank snapped back. "He needs to get over...whatever the hell happened!"

"He was molested, Frank!" Angela's voice was shrill. "By Father Dan!"

"My son ain't no faggot!" Frank growled.

"Being raped by a priest doesn't make you gay, Pop," Jane informed him acidly, feeling the last reserves of her patience draining away rapidly. "And you two need to keep it down before you get me evicted. My room." This last was to Frankie. Christ knew she wasn't going to be getting any sleep in there tonight.

"They're fightin' about me, ain't they?" Tommy slurred as they set him on the edge of the bed and stripped the vomit-soaked shirt from him, tossing it to the floor.

"They're fighting because our father is an asshole," Jane corrected him, kneeling to pull his sneakers off his feet.

"Sorry," Tommy moaned again. "Never shoulda innerduced -" His words trailed off into unintelligibility as he slumped sideways, barely avoiding knocking his skull against the headboard. At least no one else would be hearing whatever he was apologizing for. They dragged his jeans down his legs, left his skivvies in place and tucked him beneath the sheets, positioned on his side in case of any more vomiting.

"Can you keep an eye on him for a bit?" she asked Frankie.

"As opposed to dealing with Pop?" her brother inquired with a sardonic half-smile. "No problem. Get him the hell outta here and go see Maura." He slumped to the floor beside the bed, leaning against the nightstand as Jane returned to the living room, where their parents were still arguing, though at least at a lower volume.

"Come on, Angela!" her father was saying. "If the church did this to our boy, what do we owe them? You can show them how much you think all their so-called holiness is worth! Just sign the paper!"

Jane stopped short, staring at him in disbelief. "You have got to be kidding me!" Who in the hell _was_ this man who was trying to use Tommy's trauma to his own advantage? Could it really be the same man who had taught her to skate, showed her the difference between a pipe wrench and a monkey wrench as she sat beside him, watching him work and thinking he was the greatest man in the world? "You're trying to get her to renounce the church so that you can have a Catholic wedding? You fucking hypocrite!"

"Watch your mouth!" he snapped at her, his face flushing red. "This is between your mother and me!"

"The kids are the ones you want to turn into bastards, Frank!" Angela told him. "You don't think they ought to have a say in it?"

"I'm their father!" he roared, the same 'Because I said so' argument-ender he'd used since childhood...but Jane was no longer a child, and she had reached the end of her rope before she had ever set foot in her apartment tonight.

"No, you're our sperm donor," she informed him, her voice tightly controlled, ice cold, barely aware of Frankie appearing at her bedroom door. "And you're not welcome here. Get out and go back to your whore."

He slapped her.

She punched him.

Hard.

And it felt _good_ to see him stumble back, eyes wide in shock and blood from his split lip spilling between his fingers. It should have been scary, how good it felt...but she was too busy feeling good.

"Stop it!" Angela stepped between them, glaring at Frank. "I'm not signing your annulment, so you might as well leave."

"Before I arrest your ass for assaulting a police officer," Frankie put in, regarding their father with open hostility as he stepped up beside his sister.

Frank looked from one stony face to the next, wiping a bloody hand on his shirt. Turning without another word, he stomped out, slamming the door in his wake.

"You shouldn't have done that," Angela reproved Jane softly, brushing her hair away from her face and tipping her chin up to peer at the red mark the slap had left behind. "I should have," she said balefully, then sighed, her shoulders slumping. "But he's still your father."

"I don't know who he is any more," Jane muttered wearily. The elation of being able to lash out at one of the sources of her frustration was rapidly giving way to baffled betrayal and simple exhaustion. "Tommy all right?"

"Out like a light," Frankie confirmed. "Think he'll sleep the rest of it off."

"Stay with him," she instructed him. "Ma, I need to go to Maura's. Don't let Tommy go anywhere until I get back, and don't talk to any reporters."

"Baby, you're exhausted," Angela protested worriedly. "You need to sleep! Why don't you lay down on the couch and -"

"I need to talk to Maura, Ma," Jane reiterated, trying hard for patience. Her mother's eyes were puffy and red-rimmed, her face pale and strained. She'd been put through a hell of her own in the last few hours, and the bastard who had just departed hadn't helped matters. "I'm not gonna be able to sleep, and I...just need to, all right?"

She was bracing herself for more argument, but Angela just nodded. "You two worked things out, then?" she asked hopefully.

"Starting to, anyway," Jane told her, accepting the hug. It felt good, comforting, but she couldn't let go, fall apart. Not here. Not with her mother looking like she was about to come undone herself.

"Thank God for that, at least," her mother said with a sniffle. "I can't believe I didn't know."

"None of us did, Ma," Jane said softly, knowing what she was talking about.

"I should have," Angela asserted sadly. "Will he be all right, do you think?"

"We'll get him help," she promised. "It's going to take time, though."

"They...they don't think he killed Father Dan, do they?" her mother asked fearfully.

"There are going to be a lot of suspects," Jane said, trying to be both honest and reassuring. "He'll have to be ruled out, but he didn't do it. I know it." What the hell was going to happen with the investigation now that it had been hijacked by the feds was what she didn't know, but thinking about that right now was just going to get her pissed again. "I won't let anything else happen to him, Ma." If Fletcher thought he could railroad through a quickie conviction on a suspect with a prison record, he'd be in for one hell of an ugly fight.

"I know." Angela gave her a wan smile, pushing her gently toward the door. "Go. I'll call you if anything comes up."

Surely nothing would, Jane thought/hoped/prayed as she headed downstairs. After the nonstop clusterfuck of today – _yesterday_, she corrected herself, remembering what time it was – surely she'd earned a few uneventful hours?

Evidently not. Her phone rang as she was reaching for the door of the Crown Vic. Maura, checking up on her? She pulled out the phone, peering at the unfamiliar number with weary eyes, debated letting it go to voicemail, answered it anyway.

"Rizzoli."

"I know who did the priest. I can prove it wasn't your brother." The voice was male, young, unfamiliar.

"Who are you, and how do you know -"

"Meet me behind the church in half an hour. Just you. I see anyone else, I'm gone, and you'll have to hope you find the right guy."

The line went dead. She stared at the screen as though she could will it to give up the identity of her caller. None of the victims' names had been made public yet. Whoever it was either knew about the investigation or was involved in the murder, either before or after the fact. Another victim, one who had known about Tommy, as well? The killer? Or had there been more than one?

Her hand dropped to the butt of her service pistol. Cavanaugh had come close to taking it away earlier; without it, she wouldn't even be contemplating what she was currently debating. Hell, even _with_ it, she shouldn't be considering going to meet an unknown informant in an isolated location at three in the morning without backup. It was reckless, crazy.

But whoever it was knew about Tommy, knew he'd be a suspect.

She glanced at the phone again. Should she call Maura, tell her she'd be even later? The ME would never approve of what she was planning; she might even call Vince or Barry. No, she decided, feeling an uneasy sense of _deja vu _but doggedly ignoring it. Maura wasn't expecting her at a set time; she'd go there after. Like as not, the guy wouldn't show, anyway, and if Maura had already gone to bed, she'd just come back here and crash.

She made good time, and circled the block around Sacred Heart twice. All the windows in the church and rectory were dark; the security lights in front were on, but the alley that ran behind the property was dark, and she felt a renewed ripple of disquiet. No cars besides the old Ford sedan that Father Torelli drove were parked under the carport by the rectory; Murtaugh's Hyundai had been towed to the precinct, to be examined for evidence. Only the three church vans were visible by the back doors. When the sun rose, the media feeding frenzy would commence, and you wouldn't be able to thread a bicycle through the crush of news vehicles, but for now, the place seemed deserted.

She rolled through the alley, seeing nothing amiss, but the hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end. There should have been a black and white unit on watch...but no, the feds had ended local involvement in the case. Where the hell were they, then?

She parked the car, killed the engine, left the headlights on, retrieving the flashlight from under the seat. Gun in her right hand, light in her left. The gravel crunching under her boots was the loudest sound she heard, and then even that was gone as she reached the grass of the rectory lawn. What if whoever it was had decided to go after Father Torelli? She circled the building warily, looking for any sign of a disturbance or break-in. Christ, were the feds even planning to investigate? There wasn't even crime scene tape at the front door.

Which was ever so slightly ajar.

_Shit._

She should call for backup immediately...but what if Father Torelli was inside and injured? She decided in between one heartbeat and the next, kicking the door open and rushing in, sweeping the blind spots with the gun, the flashlight beam stabbing paths in the darkness, inky blackness flowing back in as soon as it was past.

"Boston PD!"

Silence.

"Father Torelli?" She got no reply, reached for the light switch by the door, flipped it.

Darkness. She stepped across the room, tried another switch, with the same result.

"God damn it," she whispered, logic finally catching up with impulse. Father Torelli wouldn't be here, wouldn't sleep in the same house where his fellow priest's blood was still drying on the carpet, where that same dead priest had molested countless boys under Father Torelli's nose. He was undoubtedly staying at a rectory in another parish, or a hotel, maybe even under observation at a hospital, but if he had an ounce of humanity in him, he was awake and praying, trying to figure out how he had failed so many innocents. His car was here because he wouldn't have been in any condition to drive himself. This house was empty except for her.

And whoever had cut the power.

She started to turn, started to drop a hand to her pocket for her phone, but froze at the unmistakable sound of a gun cocking in the darkness behind her.


End file.
